From the
Flock

Breeding notes, project updates, hatch reports, showing, breed history and the day-to-day work behind a small traditional poultry flock.

Three distinct-colour eggs entered by Scully Poultry at the Great Yorkshire Show

Latest

From the journal

Three distinct-colour eggs entered at the Great Yorkshire Show

Latest · Showing · Great Yorkshire Show 2026

Showing Eggs at the Great Yorkshire Show

Showing eggs at the Great Yorkshire Show was a new experience for me, and although I didn’t place, it ended up being far more useful than a rosette would have been.

Talking with judges and experienced exhibitors gave me a much clearer idea of what matters: correct exhibition shape, close matching between eggs, and representative colour rather than simply chasing the darkest shell.

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Three brown Welsummer eggs entered at the Great Yorkshire Show

My brown entry · Welsummer eggs

Three green eggs entered at the Great Yorkshire Show

My green egg entry

British Poultry Standards open beside a Marans mug

British Poultry Standards · next year's target

Key Reading

Current projects

Nelson, clean-legged Blue F1 Marans cockerel

Golden Cuckoo Marans · Breeding

The First Generation: Duke of Wellington, Chanel, and shuffling Gold

The project moves from genetic theory into its first living generation, with differences in type, feathering, barring and future breeding value beginning to emerge.

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Duke of Wellington, English Silver Cuckoo Marans cock

Golden Cuckoo Marans · History & Research

Reviving a lost variety

Why the English Golden Cuckoo Marans is worth trying to recover, and how surviving English and French Marans lines may still contain the pieces required to rebuild it.

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2026

Sep Showing Showing Eggs at the Great Yorkshire Show → 2 Jul Golden Cuckoo Marans The First Generation: Duke of Wellington, Chanel, and shuffling Gold → 25 Jun Golden Cuckoo Marans Reviving a lost variety →

Nelson, clean-legged Blue F1 Marans from the Golden Cuckoo project

Ongoing Project

Golden Cuckoo Marans

Our largest current Marans breeding project aims to re-establish the English Golden Cuckoo variety using English Silver Cuckoo and French Copper foundations.

The early generations are genetic scaffolding rather than finished Golden Cuckoos. Type, clean legs, dark egg quality, cuckoo pattern and eventual gold expression all have to be brought together over successive generations.

From the Notebook