Resurecting a breed or variety.

In recent years I have been working with Large fowl Birchen Moderns . This once elegant variety that  used to be common place both in Great Britain and in North America.Over the last 25 years I have seen the decline of this color variety to a point that I would consider them next to being non existant. I see some of the other varieties in various parts of North American that show some form of type but usually at the expense of being coarse. Not the stylish unique show  birds they were intended to be.With that I am not saying the breed is lost but rather that most that have been breeding the various varieties have not been concentrating on type first , color second and size a close 3rd.. In the words of one of my mentors Gord Ridler... you have to build the barn before you paint it. About 3 years ago, I decided to take on the challenge of resurecting my favorite color pattern in Large Modern gamesthat  being Birchen.I put the search on for the bird to start with . I reaslized early that I would have to utilize another breed or gene pool other than that what existed out there as any birchen Modern Large fowl I could find were either too small with little type or were large with several breed charateristics lacking ie long legs and neck... once again coarse . I contacted good freind Carl Brantley of North Carolina to go on the search for a female that would be suitable to use as a base for crossing . She did not have to be modern game but should have characterists such as a  long neck , proper tail carriage and over all body charateristics that resembled modern game type. Carl came up with a non descript game chicken that was of an oriental breed decent. A somba shamo game that was more modern game like in conformation was brought to me to start the project. Somba Shamos are a side breed of single combed shamos that come in a variety of colors and are usually used for combat in some circles. The female that Carl brought me was black in color , had a long neck short body with modern like characteristics , with acceptable length of leg....black legs and a dark eye. I was on my way to creating LF Birchen Moderns. I artifically bred my largest bantam males( four males from different lineage were used)  to this female. I raised about 20 young from these matings . I kept only 4 birds from this , only keeping the birds that most resembled moderns . The 4 birds consisted of a male and 3 females. All of which were out of 4 different bantam males for diversity. But still all half sibblings to each other through the mother. These birds all had modern like charateristics to them ,although due to the bantam influence were a bit undersized. I then secured a large fowl male from a breeder in the US for the next generation cross. With that.. this was a big bird.. He was modern but lacked a good neck and long legs. But had size. He was old and had lived thought some tough times as had frozen off toes and a rough feather condition. Oh and a real bad attitude. Due to the fact his toes prevented him from breeding naturally I opted to artificial him onto the females. The results from these matings are showing great strides in type and color. I also bred the Male ( Generation 2)  back to the best typed and colored female ( generation 2) a half sister ( Same mother) ... there are also some good typed and good colored birds that came from this mating as well. Although they are not as big as I would like to see.... Now I will have a hand full of birds that I can show from  from both sides of thsi project.several of the birds this year as several are on weight and close to what I would consider correct size... and they definatley are not coarse in type.With this I have kept track of where everbody came from and with a bit of thought will be able to put together the building blocks for next years breeding pens . I feel I am one generation from having Birchen Modern Large Fowl that will stop you  in the isle and make people take notice.... I raised 67 young birds this year.... and started culling about 4 weeks out . I am now down to 28 birds with many to go in the weeks to come. I should be down to 10-12 birds in the end. Many would say I have a bunch of cross bred chickens and a mess on my hands.. My answer to that is they are not " pure bred" but rather " Standard Bred " birds. Many use the name "pure Bred " when reffering to chickens.. which if took to task this is not what we are dealing with( there is no registry and few keep pedigree records) ... but rather birds bred to a standard..... eliminating our selves of any traits not described in the standard.   Anything is possbile if you put your mind to it .. think about your goals and how to get to them. Pick your birds to be used in any situation carefully as we all know culls are unavoidable but know what to keep, what to get rid of  and keeping a direction in mind you will get there. I will quote one of my good friends from Illinois who is a famous Plymouth Rock Large fowl breeder.. when asked what it took to breed a great rock....  " its like a sculpturer sculpting a elephant... take away all that does not look like an elephant and you will have an elephant." Bud Hudson IL> My version of this is what you tollerate you will have. Hope this has inspired you to make strides in your birds existing or dream of having....and I invite you to take a look at my progress in this project. I have posted the first picture of a bird from this project on my webiste under Large Moderns  www.featherspectrum.webs.com/ Let me know your thoughts. He is not the best I have ever seen .. but I am proud of my progress thus far.

Troy