Most of us are half way through the breeding season by now with all our hopes and dreams fulfilled, plenty of young, well-marked Gazzis, all of good type or Schiettis of good colour and pattern with type conforming to our Standard.
If only! You must have guessed by now that all this is wishful thinking, in reality for most of us it's a different story. Already next year is being talked about when things will be different - they were supposed to be different this year, but still the best pairs had infertile eggs, some young did not make up well in the nest, selfs could have been richer and more even in colour, tris better pattern, bars finer and only two (!) with clearer wings, Gazzis without that dreaded white flight or mismarked, but this is all part of breeding the Modena.
Our Club, The National Modena Club of Great Britain, has had an influx of new Modena members recently which we welcome and this article is not to put them off, instead I thought the following might help them. Having made the first move by joining the Club and purchasing The Modena Club Handbook, which covers all aspects of the showing of Modena, if you are reading this you will have already found Feathered World with most helpful articles and contacts with clubs and breeders of all varieties of pigeons.
Modenas come in a vast range of colours, some 152 combinations and now Ralph
Sargeant has retired there could well be a few more.
Most of the popular colours are depicted on the coloured pages of the handbook
and to help new members I have made an availability chart.
No 1 Red Argent - very scarce; 2 White - not plentiful; 3 Yellow - available;
4 Mealy - available; 5 Silver Grizzle - scarce; 6 White Spangled Blue Argent
- scarce; 7 White Spangled Silver Dun Argent - very scarce; 8 Bronze Spangled
Black - very scarce - in the form shown some badly marked ones available that
need working on (page 10 handbook).
No 1 Sulphur Tri-colour - available in small numbers; 2 White Barred Blue
Argent - scarce; 3 Black - plentiful; 4 Russet Tri-colour - plentiful; 5 Brown
- scarce; 6 Silver Dun - plentiful; 7 Yellow Chequer - scarce; 8 Dilute Lavender
- very very scarce, I have not seen a good one for years (page 12 handbook).
No 1 Black Gazzi - not plentiful; 2 Plain Sulphur - very scarce; 3 Blue -
plentiful; 4 Bronze Tri-colour Gazzi - plentiful; 5 Silver Gazzi - not plentiful;
6 Plain Bronze - available; 7 Black Magnani - various colours in Magnani available;
8 Red - available; 9 Blue Grizzle - available more so over the last few years;
10 Blue Gazzi - available (page 28 handbook).
No 1 Bronze Tri-colour - plentiful; Blue Argent - scarce; 3 Ochre Tri-colour
- available; 4 Cream - not plentiful; 5 silver - not plentiful; 6 Bronze Magnani
- As for Black Magnani; 7 Dun - some turn up now and again but are often chequers,
even bars, this colour is often confused with Brown or Khaki. Other colouirs
not shown in the colour plates are Gold - scarce; Lavender - scarce; Indigo
including Bronze Indigo - available in small numbers; Andalusian - very scarce,
last good one I had was back in the eighties. Red Chequer - I am surprised
that this colour is not shown as it is popular and available; Mottles - mainly
in black, red, bronze are also very popular and available.
