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From: Neil Thomson
Security: khaki
Date: 15 Sep 2008
Time: 11:08:05 +0100
Remote Name: 217.39.173.153
Dave I know what you mean about the feathers looking artificial-I remember when I started, I had the same feeling-especially around the head-looked to me like the heads had been painted, feather were so fine. On my own birds the head feathers could be seen as individual feathers so did not have the same "finish" to the look of the bird. Not sure how you get this "finished" look, but believe that it is probably genetic, so get your hands on some that have this look that you want and you will probably get there quicker. As to the size, and the reference to handling like a chicken.....well you could open a can of worms on this one! In my opinion (and that often gets me into trouble,) a lot of wests out there are too big and do handle like chickens-this is partly due to some of the newer colours being bred down from Tipplers (Khaki, Brown, Andalusian) where the size comes from. This is ok if you then breed some of the size back out by breediong back to wests with none of this blood, however if you cross this type of west together you will end up keeping this size in. As you will have noticed, these birds do win, as they are liked by some judges-personally I like mine a bit smaller with enough body to be considered a flying pigeon-some of the west being shown today would not fly given the chance. Unfortunately this is one of the things you have to live with when keeping a "flying" breed without a standard-there are different types and different tastes.