Heritage
Poultry have been with us for many thousands of years. The birds that we know as domestic poultry descended from the Red Jungle Fowl Gallus gallus.
The fowl that has remained the closest to the Red Jungle Fowl is the Old English Game, which is of very similar appearance and temperament to their ancestors. Game birds have been with us since the earliest attempts at domestication. They were kept originally for sport or cockfighting which was a favourite pastime of the Romans and other ancient civilizations although Plato complained about people cockfighting instead of labouring.
Pictures of Jungle Fowl can be found in the tombs in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor which date from around 1400 BC while Cock birds are featured on Asian coins from around 700 BC.
Over the years poultry evolved into many different types. Marco Polo on his journeys described seeing chickens with "fur". This almost certainly was a reference to the breed we know of as the Silky.
What is certain is that many of the breeds of domestic poultry we have today in this country came into being within the last one hundred and fifty years, when the idea of keeping fowls for pleasure and not just profit or recreation came into vogue with the advent of Poultry Shows. To produce different breeds people began to utilize the existing breeds that abounded in the countryside at that time, such as Hamburg's, Rosecombes and Game. They also brought back any interesting fowl that were discovered in explorations across the world to recreate the tastes & flavours associated with real eggs.
Old Cotswold Legbars and Burford Browns, developed by Clarence Court over the last fifteen years, possess genes from the direct descendants of the original blue egg laying fowl from Patagonia.
Clarence Court maintains the bloodlines of these birds so that they remain distinct from the modern day commercial hybrid.
We aim to use traditional husbandry methods which are more suitable for older breeds in order for them to flourish and lay eggs that we consider to be the very best of the best.