The Brahma and Cochin Club of Australia Inc
Don Jones Memorial
Don Jones Memorial
Don Jones – Master Brahma Breeder
Don Jones – Master Brahma Breeder
A Story of Don’s Recent Endeavors
by Luke C Price (written 28/06/2014)
Brahma died out in Australia sometime around World War 2 (between 1935 and 1947). Following the breed’s disappearance, Don Jones was one of the first people in Australia, along with Andrew Rathbone (large fowl), to recreate the breed and the first to recreate bantam.
Don has been around poultry his whole life and has bred Light Sussex for many years just like his father, uncles and brother. He first became aware of the Brahma breed in the 1954 after seeing photos of them in old poultry papers that he had found under some vinyl ‘lino’ flooring he was pulling up. When he started seriously searching for the breed around 1959, he couldn’t find them.
Photographs of Don's old newspaper articles which inspired him to recreate the bantam Brahma
Photographs of Don's old newspaper articles which inspired him to recreate the bantam Brahma
In 1979/1980 Don started recreating Brahma. He began with Light Sussex; over time, adding Pekin, Indian Game and Wyandotte. Over the next 15 years and with a couple of changes in strategy along the way, by 1995 Don had them at a point where they were breeding reasonably true, and he had a reasonable strain of bantam Light Brahma. Around this time he was also well on his way to recreating bantam Dark Brahma. The Darks arose as a sport of some very “smutty” (excessive dark undercolour and black in the hackle and tail areas) Light bantams. It took a couple of years to get the white wing bay in the males.
Don has given away hundreds of bantam Brahma to people over the years. On a number of occasions, I have observed Don giving his best bird to someone to start them off in the breed. Among many of his other qualities, Don’s generosity and passion for the breed is definitely something to aspire to. Over the last couple of years Don has helped me out with a couple of bantam Darks to help improve my Partridge and Blue Dark bantams. One of my colours in development - Cream Partridge has some of Don’s Dark Brahma bantam in their makeup.
Don is always striving for continued improvement of the Brahma breed. At 80 years of age (on 12th July) and with almost 35 years of ‘recreation work’ his enthusiasm has not diminished. In 2007/2008 Don mated a Standard Dark Brahma Cockerel (given to him by Bryan Jon Meade) with his bantam Dark Brahma and bantam Silver Wheaten females. He was concerned about the lack of size and the lack of a strong Brahma head which is so characteristic of the breed, in the bantam. The results were fantastic and dramatically improved the size, wing angle, brow and dewlap. After a few years of increased variation in size, the variation settled down and he is consistently producing bantam darks that have more substance and improved Brahma characteristics.
In the images above the hen on the left was too large for a bantam and she was entered in the standard class at the 2009 show. I think she won Champion Standard Dark Brahma that year. Note her substance, type and improved head. The hen on the right shows the appropriate bantam size but with an improved head and type. The bone and muscle in Don’s bantams has been improved substantially with many of his cockerels displaying fine table qualities. Don is continuing to work on his bantam Darks including improving comb size and shape.
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