Aberdale is located along the Southern Ontario shoreline of Lake Erie, near Long Point, a milder climate for Canada that is wonderful for raising poultry. I have 1 1/2 acres of totally fenced property as I raise and show reg'd Shetland sheepdogs as well and have been doing so for over 25 years. Most of my poultry are given the opportunity to free range during the day in the off season but are put into breeding pens or separated into breeding groups in very early spring. I prefer to allow my birds to be birds and live like they were intended, out scratching for bugs in my gardens and chasing each other around and enjoying sunshine.  My love of chickens started about 17 years ago with the purchase of 25 meat hens and 1 cockerel thrown in for good measure. I did not know the difference between meat chickens and laying hens and when over the next year all my chickens died from rapid growth related issues I quickly found out I did not want to raise meat hens. Then I picked up 4 red sex-link laying hens and the rest as they say is history...only difference is now I raise mostly rare belgian booted  bantams and have developed my own breed called the Aberdette which lay multi colored eggs as I eat very few eggs and have never ate a single one of my birds ever.

 I am still working on building my chicken pages and I still need to take pictures of some of my chickens but its a work in progress. Go to my Poultry Available page to see what breeds I have available at the moment.  When I first got Romans several years ago when I picked up my first "pair" of Tufted Roman geese and after a year of "no eggs" I realized my pair were infact a pair of males. After searching around (they are difficult to find as they were rare and are still listed on the Critical list of the Livestock Conservancy in the USA) I finally found and purchased a female and my love affair with this medium breed of geese began. I also bought a pair of welsh harlequin ducks (in silver) (another rare breed) after seeing a welshie being used for stock at a dog herding trial on ducks and fell in love with them as well. I ended up switching to the welsh golds and Welsh Harlequins in gold are what I have been raising for many years. Welsh Harlequins were too listed on the Critical List at one point but have now moved to the Watch list as they have started to become quite popular. There are still very few correctly marked birds in golds.