agiingles09

9. The life of the italian giant frill - 2.

Every now and then, in particular circumstances, I try to get the pair of Italian Giant Frills to bring up the offspring of the feeder birds. Sometimes it works out well, but I have no great illusions about it, because I think that with their own brood, which at hatching are less lively than those of the feeders, there wouldnít be the same success. At any rate, in these ìcomfortingî cases, I take care to record this positive aspect of rusticity, which is then useful to me the following year as a selective criteria when I am uncertain which of two birds to choose. I also recommend recording in the breeding registers all the characteristics ñ both positive and negative ñ of individual birds, to make it easier to choose reproducers, and to have adequate information for other breeders I might do swaps with.

I must say, though, that the stage Iíve now reached is such that I prefer to use only my own birds as reproducers, because they are part of a firmly-established "stock" which I know inside out, and in which there are blood lines of Whites of rare beauty.

I would be lying if I were to claim that my stock, undoubtedly one of the most typical, was also one of the most rustic. Italian Giant Frills, like the most highly-valued Parisians, often hold unpleasant surprises in store. And it is the impossibility of doing anything in the face of the not uncommon sudden illnesses or deaths that has discouraged even some of the most enthusiastic and tenacious breeders, who have ended up turning their attentions to less difficult breeds.

In the many years ñ full of pleasures and tribulations ñ that I have been pursuing this hobby of mine, Iíve gradually formed what might be called a "fatalist" outlook. When I lose a splendid bird that I have built up great hopes about, I quickly record the "painful loss" in the breeding registers and then try to forget about it straight away, so it all ends there. And I can also console myself with the thought that the DNA of that bird is at the end of the day present in lots of other exemplars which are still alive and well. And then, slightly rhetorically, I conclude by saying that when all is said and done there are more important things in life than canaries.