|
|



Fanfactory Fantails - Howard Piper - Queensland - Australia |
Fanfactory fantails is the fantail stud owned and operated on the Queensland Gold Coast in Australia by myself, Howard Piper with close affiliations with good friend Alan Mutimer of Melbourne, Victoria. Australia. I have been breeding fantails since 1969 with the occasional break totaling seven years during the 1970's whilst in pursuit of adolescent folly. During the remaining 32 years with fantails I have most certainly wasted many years trying to breed that illusive show champion with little or no success due to a number of reasons. I believe that the main reason why I failed was that you do not just produce a show champion out of oblivion or luck. It is the product of many years of hard work in creating a family of fantails that "Work" with each other. A show champion will not just jump out at you from a loft full of mediocre fantails. One of the other reasons that success with fantails eluded me was because I fell into the trap of hero worship where anything another breeder would tell me I would believe to be gospel despite the fact that he may be motivated by money, fame, show wins or all of the above. Then, believe it or not, after having fantails for 15 years, the penny dropped. I started with the help of one or two others, the standard started to make sense. Many of us have fallen in these traps or are still suffering the same dilemma. Fanfactory fantails first cracked it in the right way at the 1991 Australian National Pigeon Association Show in Melbourne with Brian Pogue officiating as judge. I had what I consider my first real win with a young Blue hen, one of the very few fantails I had bred the previous year because of business commitments. Learning from this win, I grew from there. I had great discussion on fantails with those I deemed worthy of intelligent input because at that time there was a very great deal of fantail propaganda circulating and to break away from the accepted was considered akin to committing a crime. Fanfactory fantails learned what we consider to be the golden rule for fantails and that golden rule is; if you do not have a body that is round then you do not have the foundation of a good fantail. Some may argue this point - good on them. It is a point that Alan and I have understood and adhered to over the years. By doing so, we have produced some of the finest fantails that money can buy. Not that selling fantails is our first priority. Producing fantails of ultimate quality is our goal and our gift to the fantail fancy. If fanciers are not interested in our contribution to the fancy, that is fine with us. What they must understand, is that what you are seeing when viewing Fanfactory fantails is a work in progress. The birds on display in these pages are not the finished article - one wonders if ones work is ever finished. One thing for sure, we are producing pleasing fantails along the way. Howard Piper July 2008. |