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Country of Origin: Britain
Category: Soft feather
Egg Colour: Tinted (Sitters)
|
CLASSIFICATION |
CODE |
MASSES |
BREED CODE |
RING SIZES |
|
Heavy breed |
|
|
|
|
|
LARGE |
|
|
124 |
|
|
Cock |
10 |
4.0kg |
|
F |
|
Hen |
12 |
3.0kg |
|
E |
|
Cockerel |
14 |
4.0kg |
|
F |
|
Pullet |
16 |
3.0kg |
|
E |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
BANTAMS |
|
|
520 |
|
|
Cock |
10 |
1.7 maximum |
|
C |
|
Hen |
12 |
1.5 maximum |
|
B |
|
Cockerel |
14 |
1.7 maximum |
|
C |
|
Pullet |
16 |
1.5 maximum |
|
B |
Table chicken producers in the counties of Kent, Sussex and Surrey have supplied the London markets for centuries. Some used the historic Dorking breed, but many, probably most, bred less distinctive looking fowls, which were not generally recognized as a distinct breed until comparatively recently. These birds were relatively uniform in some respects, being large, with a long back, and having white skin and flesh, which has long been the preference of English consumers. Plumage colours and patterns varied, although many farmers selected for a uniform colour so that their birds were identifiable locally if stolen.
When poultry shows started in the mid-nineteenth century there was an incentive to ‘officially’ name and standardize breeds, with the first known entry of ‘Sussex Fowls’ at the 1890 Lewes Show. Progress was delayed until 1903, when several meetings were held at the Elephant and Castle Hotel at Lewes (still open in 2012) to form the Sussex Poultry Club and produce a breed standard. Three colour varieties were recognized initially, Light, Speckled and ‘Red or Brown’, the latter being a pragmatic acceptance of the new breed’s colour variability.
Having a variable ‘Red or Brown’ variety was bound to cause confusion and arguments among exhibitors and judges, so in 1906 the Club decided to recognize Reds only, possibly favoured because of local sentiment from the similar colour of the Sussex cattle breed. Mr. John T. Ade and others were not going to give up their Brown Sussex so easily, and appealed the decision in 1909, were refused, and so set up a separate Brown Sussex Club. This lasted until 1913, when the main Sussex Club relented, and accepted Browns, rendering the separate club redundant. The same scenario happened when Buff Sussex were created and refused standardization by the main club in 1921, resulting in a separate Buff Sussex Club until accepted in 1926.
Other colour varieties standardized in the UK are White (circa 1926), Silver (1948), and Coronation, which are like Light Sussex, but with blue instead of black markings. They were made in the 1930s, and named in 1936 to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VIII, which, of course, never happened because he abdicated. Coronation Sussex didn’t really ‘happen’ then either, and remade strains are a very recent addition to British Poultry Standards.
The first Light Sussex bantams were made by Mr. Fred Smalley, who worked for Poultry World magazine and was manager of the Olympia Poultry Show, in his modest garden at 4 Blackheath Park, London, SE3. He started making them about 1916, and began exhibiting them in 1920. Other fanciers made Speckled and White Sussex bantams, both first exhibited in 1927. Brown, Red and Silver Sussex bantams appeared at UK shows in the early 1950s, and Coronation Sussex bantams about 1980, although there may have been earlier attempts.
On the commercial poultry farming side, Light Sussex hens were widely used by UK farmers in a sex-linked mating with Rhode Island Red cocks, from the 1920s, when the principle of sex-linkage was discovered, until the early 1960s, when the poultry industry switched to hybrids. In the decades before the modern egg and broiler industries existed, the crossbred ‘gold’ pullets were the most common layers, and the ‘silver’ cockerels reared as table birds. Some strains of ‘Utility Light Sussex’ were developed in the 1930s and 1950s for smaller body size, to produce better ‘RIR x LS’ laying pullets.
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Amended May 2012