03/23/2026
Ayam Cemani fanciers: 🖤🖤🖤
This. It's not gate keeping, it's not greed, it's not flakiness, it's not anything you did or I'm doing, it's just simply that I only get a few each time I hatch that i believe are worthy to keep or pass along.
When I first started with this breed I was scammed hard by 'the sweetest' young man and it made me so gun-shy and awkward with every breeder I met after that until I was fortunate enough to meet a breeder who cares enough about the breed to look past my awkward bu****it and mentor me. Now I invest my best self back into the breed and breed towards SOP with passion. 🖤🖤🖤
Many people message me to ask if I offer hatching eggs for the Ayam Cemani. I don't. It's not because I don't want to share though. I have a number of reasons, but greed isn't one of them.
Having high standards for this breed means only keeping a few of the best from each year's produce. I am currently working with 5 mature hens and 5 pullets. I keep the ones that I feel have the ingredients I need to cook up a better batch than the last. Each bird has a number of strengths and minimal weaknesses. Each one brings something to the table that I feel can make the next generation better than the last. But working with a small number of hens means fewer eggs to share.
The hens are rarely synchronized in their laying cycles, and many of the pullets are not laying hatching size eggs yet. Collecting 0-2 eggs per day makes it impossible to collect enough eggs to ship a dozen within a reasonable timeframe. When I ship eggs of my other breeds, I prefer to ship eggs that are no more than 3 days old if possible.
I generally pair mate and I hatch very small clutches at a time. I prefer to inspect the chicks at hatch and several more times as they grow. Data collection is very much a part of my breeding program. It helps me find patterns in what my birds are producing. This helps me identify carriers of positive and negative traits. I'm very happy with what I'm producing so far this year, but I'm still trying different pairings and evaluating what works best. Each new pairing represents a new data set. The larger the sample size, the easier it is to find patterns. So I am trying to raise as many as I can right here at home.
The final qualifying meet for APA breed acceptance is this November at the Ohio Nationals. Myself and many other breeders are all raising as many as we can in order select the best-of-the-best to represent the breed at that show. Now is not the time for me to be selling what may be my best stock.
And if I'm completely honest, there are some buyers that expect perfection out of every chick and that bothers me. Perfection doesn't happen in any breed, but AC breeders in particular have been dragged through the mud the last few years by people who don't understand this. I prefer to minimize my risk in that statistic.
My birds have been slowly and steadily improving each year. I've culled flopped combs, feather leakage, pink in the mouth, slipped wing, split wing, duck toes, crooked toes, side sprigs, feather stubs on the shanks, twisted feathers, and probably some other defects and DQ's. Each year, the percentage of growouts with those flaws is decreasing. That's what we want to see, and I've really enjoyed the process of improving these birds. This is how it's done - careful evaluation, patience, space, time, and an understanding of genetic inheritance. The type of buyers I would want to work with also understand this.
At some point, I will have enough hens to produce what I like to see with enough consistency to share hatching eggs and more chicks with a greater degree of confidence. Until then, I only hope this year's crop of growouts is so outstanding that I have a hard time choosing which ones to keep and which ones to share with others to start their own journey in this breed.
In the meantime, we'll be over here enjoying the process to "raise some chickens that don't suck".
