Continental, European, and Japanese Strains. It should be realized that the society finch has a long history, and each continent has stressed different aspects when developing new strains. There are different judging standards in Europe, Asia ,and the USA. In Europe, there was a big effort to increase size and the scaling pattern on the belly. This was done by mixing in other Lonchura species and in essence creating interspecies hybrids. Also, the ino mutation and the gray mutation were discovered in Europe and the best inos and grays still come from there. In Japan, there was no attempt to increase size. Instead, the Japanese mastered the difficult skill of improving feather mutations and now are the leaders in frilled birds. They tend to like light colors including dilutes and albinos although they have imported ino, gray, etc. and have all the known colors in their flocks. The Japanese also discovered the Pearl mutation in 1982 and have worked on it to make it impressive in intensity and patterning. In the US we have many types of society finches. Our selfs are much like the Japanese birds but instead of concentrating on feather types the US has improved body conformation and some lines have perfect conformation. In Europe, the body shape is broad and more "chesty". So, it is all a matter of taste. I am sure now that all types are present (the Euro and Japanese as of 1998) that new mixtures will be tried and new styles developed. The society is a great bird to work on and, like the canary, it will eventually spawn off many new types. |
