In 1980 I started a business called Bellsouth, named after my home town Belgrave South. My idea was to develop a catalogue mail order company supplying anyone with poultry from the backyard hobbyist to the commercial farm sector. Anxious to learn all I could I visited every poultry enterprise I could find, from pure breeders, backyard hobbyists, broiler farms layers farms, breeder farms, hatcheries, and of course processors. In the days before the internet and Google, I drove some of them mad with questions. I owe many people who took the time to teach me, from farmers through to professors. And the mail order business grew over the next 32 years to have 25,000 customers on its database.
