PEORIA, Ill. — A new special interest (SPIN) club organized by Peoria County 4-H leaders allowed urban youth an opportunity to participate alongside rural kids in learning the proper care, feeding and showing of poultry, including many breeds of chickens. An overwhelming response to the inaugural Peoria County 4-H Poultry SPIN Club, led by Brimfield poultry farmers Bob and Robin Forney, boosted the number of birds shown at the 2014 Peoria County 4-H Fair by around 40 – an increase of more than 50 percent over any previous year’s showings.

“It’s not that the poultry show was extinct; it wasn’t. But it had dwindled in numbers,” said Cathy Ludolph, program coordinator of 4-H youth development for the University of Illinois Extension in Peoria. “Many of the kids had never owned chickens, but they ended up purchasing poultry and showing them. The Poultry SPIN Club met six times and covered poultry-related topics from embryology – hatching eggs – to preparing your bird for show.”

After the SPIN Club’s initial six meetings were completed, the group – then numbering around two dozen youth and their families – decided to continue beyond the required gatherings at the request of club members.

“The kids gained knowledge on the parts of the birds, the parts of the eggs. The more they became educated, the more curious they got,” said Bob Forney, whose barn, with its menagerie of around 15 breeds of chickens, served as the site of several club meetings.

“For the youth already involved in the poultry show, just having a group that was topic-specific and receiving in-depth lessons about poultry was something they wanted. They wanted more and more information on how to care for the birds, how to get them ready for show and how to show them,” Ludolph noted. “And for the others, it was an effort to allow more kids to have access to animals. The kids learned responsibility from caring for the birds, cleaning cages and feeding them, and showing them.”

The Forneys have served as poultry superintendents for the Peoria County 4-H Show for around eight years, with Robin Forney leading the Jubilee Patriots 4-H Club in Brimfield. The couple raised four boys involved in 4-H, each showing poultry at the county 4-H fair. Eventually, Bob and Robin began working with other area farm kids who showed an accelerated interest in poultry, leading to their establishment of a 4-H SPIN club for county youth.

The club meetings the couple held with their new charges would usually last anywhere from 2-2.5 hours. During the meetings, the Forneys enjoyed passing on knowledge they gleaned from 30 years of raising chickens on both production and show levels.

For instance, “We try to keep first-timers away from Asiatic birds because they are a flightier bird. A bigger, American breed can be a lot calmer. A flighty bird can scare the kids, and they’ll want nothing more to do with chickens,” Bob Forney said. “The more you handle the birds, the calmer they get. You can definitely tell the kids who work with the birds more than others.”

Forney said he was impressed but not overly surprised by the positive reaction to the 4-H Poultry SPIN Club, which was organized through fliers, advertising in 4-H materials and word of mouth. The Poultry SPIN Club boasted “five or six” families who showed animals – any animals – for the first time ever at the county 4-H fair. Forney credits public interest in organic and locally-produced poultry and eggs for fueling interest in chickens and other “yardbirds.” 

“Chickens, the way I look at it, don’t take a lot of room to raise. They (provide) good fertilizer, and if they are free-ranging, feed off of a lot bugs and insects,” he said. “Chickens are an animal you can actually get something out of, as far as eggs. And, I think people just enjoy having them around.”

The Peoria County 4-H Poultry SPIN Club will continue for a second year beginning in November 2014, Ludolph and the Forneys announced.