Buttercup bantams are very rare! It took us 3 years of constant searching and networking to find a breeder that could ship!!
Now that we have them, we have been breeding for 5 years. The biggest difficulty we find is that no body wants bantams. So, there are simply not enough people to get involved and help them grow. Alot of the issues i hear regarding the bantam breed is that people are affraid of having "flighty" birds or "tiny" eggs.
Our birds are from exhibition lines, which are pure bred, and selected to be calm.. Our experience has been that butters (being true to their breed) are calm. and will readily eat from your hand. Even our roosters like being held. However, they are very alert/ observant, and that is what makes them a good free range bird; its hard to get the drop on a buttercup!
I could see where you would get flighty birds from hybrids, or from situations where the birds were being constantly bombarded by sudden movement, change, wide open enclosures with no covering, and excessive loud noise. These birds are "unimproved" and we're never bred to sit in a battery cage, so extra care is needed when working with young birds (who behave more like quail than chicks); they have a high level of self-preservation instinct.
And the bantam eggs are basically the same size as the standard buttercups eggs, so in our experience, the bantam while not as "popular" is far more economical. Our 4 year old hens still produce 300 eggs a year on a minimal protein diet... That's a good bird regardless of size in our book!
For those interested in learning more anout the breed-- The American Buttercup Club is under "NEW" management, and is seeking more members to be more active. They also have a new web page:
Www.americanbuttercupclub.org
And can now be found on Facebook too!
We are currently working with a few Breeders to help restore/ preserve "silver" buttercups. They are a color phase that went extinct in 1825, but a few silver types do pop up from time to time in pure bred flocks. We currently have silver bantams, and hope to see the buttercup breed grow in the US.
