tEXAS cLEARBODY
We started breeding with Texas Clear bodies intensively as from mid 2012. As there are very few breeders in South Africa that showed real interest in this rare variety, the chances to get hold of good quality birds were very slim.
In 2009 we bought 2 Opaline TCB's from the Pieters Stud which (At that time) was some of the better ones we've seen amongst breeders. Since we do not keep any Lutinos, we had to cross breed these two birds back into our Normal lines. We bred TCB's, but these birds were small in posture. We lost all hope and these birds were sold. In 2010 we were lucky enough to buy an excellent "CC winner" Normal light green TCB cock from Casper Maree which had some really excellent head features. This Cock was paired back to most of our "small but modest" TCB hens and eventually the best of these offspring hens were paired back to this cock. This helped to increase the numbers on our TCB's, but did not do much to improve on any of the "show qualities" that we needed.
2011 proved to be one of our best years , breeding Cinnamons that made us very proud on the show bench. Since these birds had all the qualities that lacked in our TCB's we decided to pair some of our best Cinnamons to our best TCB's. These produced split TCB cocks that were more acceptable in feather, head and shoulder qualities. These splits were then again to be used on our TCB hens. Since our Cinnamon line was relatively strong this proved to work very well. However..........due to "too close related" birds in our Cinnamon line, the numbers of offspring decreased significantly. So, we've decided to pair some of our TCB's to Spangles, thus getting Spangle TCB's that we could pair back to our "so called" Cinnamon x TCB line. Again we got the numbers of the TCB's up and some of the features, like lower masks, improved.
We are still taking small steps, but are definitely heading in the right direction with the Texas Clear bodiesand hopefully someday........... we will have a CC winner on the Show bench
