About Ambresse.com

About Ambresse.com: This website is an informational website about American Bresse Chickens, and is produced by Ambresse Acres, a hobby farm featuring American Bresse Chickens.

Ambresse.com is about American Bresse Chickens

Ambresse.com is an informational website about American Bresse Chickens. It went live in mid-2021. 

The new-to-North America chicken breed, American Bresse Chickens, is a very exciting and promising one. It brings to the poultry world in a single breed the very best of both egg-layers and meat birds. Especially meat birds. American Bresse chickens, properly finished, have been described by chefs and royalty alike as the most delicious chicken on the planet. 

The breed is an ancient one in France. It has recently been imported into the United States, where it has a different working name in North America. Details of this history are here.

Why Call the Website Ambresse.com?

The word Ambresse is clearly a contraction of the breed name, American Bresse. The footer of each page of the website explains that the term ambresse is not intended to replace the name of the breed: American Bresse.

I mention this as many breeders are anxious to protect the breed name in its original form. So am I. As a team player along with all of you who have a vested interest in the growth of the American Bresse breed in North America, unity of purpose will be a good thing. Please know that the name Ambresse carries with it no intent at all to influence the ultimate name of the breed.

So why did we call the website Ambresse when the breed is American Bresse?? Availability of domain aside, there are two strong reasons to use "ambresse," both of them related to ease of use on the world wide web:

1. A short domain name is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) advantage. Domain names under ten (10) characters are given ranking favor by the search engines. 
   
   
2. But also: It is so much easier on a day-by-day basis to not have to type out a long domain name every time one needs to share a link or send an email. (Been there, done that; didn't want to do it again.)
   

About Ambresse.com's Mission

The mission of this website is four-fold:

1. To educate the public about American Bresse Chickens and their value and usefulness to homemakers, to self-reliant homesteads, and to restaurants of all types. 
   
   
2. To support breeders in their day-to-day operations and decisions with regard to breeding stock choices, basic animal husbandry, and info about equipment, supplies, and housing.
   
   
3. To enable breeders to market their birds and products through enhanced visibility on the world wide web. To this end we have created an American Bresse Chicken Breeders listing page, as well as an American Bresse Chickens For Sale classified ads page. Additional pages and enhancements for the use of breeders will be forthcoming in time. 
   
   
4. To participate in the formation of an international American Bresse Breed Club serving the United States and Canada, and to support the growing functions of this breed club as it matures into a force for good in the world of American Bresse chickens and breeders. 
   
   

Ambresse.com is a Young Website

About Ambresse.com: It'll probably take a few years for the website to mature out of toddlerhood into teenager status, so to speak. We'll be adding information, photos, and webpages as quickly as possible.

If you'd like to know what this website may look like in a few more months or years, you can see examples in my other two websites: Raising-Rabbits.com, and MyPortAngeles.com.

Guest Post Opportunities:
Ambresse.com welcomes guest authors who desire to contribute guest posts on this website, including chefs familiar with serving American Bresse entrees, and American Bresse breeders. Full attribution, bylines, and links are always given. Feel free to contact me with article ideas or questions.

About Ambresse Acres the Hobby Farm

The Ambresse.com website is sponsored by Ambresse Acres. Karen Patry is the owner, author, and webmaster of the website, AND the main chicken keeper at Ambresse Acres. 

For years my main focus was rabbits. Up until 2020, I raised rabbits and spent much of my time writing a website about rabbits, even as I kept chickens in the rabbitry. It was a perfect combo - rabbits in elevated cages and barnyard chickens foraging under the cages for tidbits like flies, maggots, bugs, and even mice. They churned up the rabbit droppings until they were perfect for the garden. The eggs were a delicious bonus.

As I raised and showed rabbits, I wrote scores of website pages about every aspect of raising rabbits and took thousands of photos.

I invented an easy-to-use and easy-to-clean rabbit caging system, and wrote some more. 

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The website www.Raising-Rabbits.com is the successful fruit of that labor, which also includes the publication of a very helpful book, Rabbit Raising Problem Solver, by Storey Publications, which is also the publisher of Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits, and Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens. Rabbit Raising Problem Solver is available wherever good books are sold, including Amazon.com.

The Raising-Rabbits website now ranks within the top 0.05% of all websites for traffic as measured by Alexa.com (91,045 on 9/6/2021). It's pretty amazing. Of course I'm gunning for the same success with Ambresse.com.

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The Fateful Day I Heard About American Bresse Chickens

I became aware of the American Bresse breed almost by accident in early 2020. At the time, the breed had been in the United States for only 9 years. Almost no one seemed to be aware of it.

I'll never forget the fateful day that I heard someone say, "I raise American Bresse chickens."

The comment was made in a Facebook convo, and virtually everyone on that thread was asking...

Huh?? WHAT breed is THAT??

Being utilitarian by nature and more than a little interested in self-sufficiency, I was immediately fascinated by this new American Bresse breed. The more I listened, the more I liked. The more I liked, the more intrigued I became. I was sucked into a vortex of research to learn everything I could discover about American Bresse chickens.

The rabbits are now gone. I replaced them with these amazing white American Bresse chickens, which I now raise exclusively.

And because the breed is so new in North America, my attention turned first to implementing selective breeding to put the flock on a course of betterment, and then to writing a new website focused mainly on the American Bresse breed. Hence... Ambresse.com.

About Ambresse Acres in 2023

About Ambresse Acres in 2023: The flock is split into 3 pens; each rooster being strategically paired with complementary hens. At the start of 2023 we implemented the use of wing bands to assist in the process of selective breeding. Progress has been made and is continuing to be made in the area of genetics and conformation to the standard of perfection. (Perfection is a never-ending but exhilarating pursuit....)

A low percentage of Ambresse Acres chicks still show tiny black flecks in their yellow down, which grow into black or black-spotted feathers. This is due to mismatched dominant white genes. These chicks are 100% American Bresse, but black leakage does not meet the standard of perfection.

We are in the process of obtaining genetic testing to identify birds, if any, that also carry a recessive white gene under all those white feathers. This is because it is when a single dominant white gene is paired with either a color gene or a recessive white gene that the black color leakage occurs.

Once the birds with mismatched genetics are identified, they will be removed from the breeding flock. And in the meantime of course, we continue selectively breeding for the other traits and body conformation that make a Bresse a Bresse - size, leg color, comb, body width, back length, tail, pin bone width, growth rate, etc.

Ambresse Acres Sales Policy Changes

Until the underlying color genetics questions have been settled (hopefully soon!), Ambresse Acres no longer sells chicks, due to the (occasional) abuse of our written caveat that chicks purchased from Ambresse Acres are for personal use only. 

We will soon be in a position to again offer beautiful American Bresse chicks to the American Pacific Northwest (since we don't ship). When the time comes, we'll send out a notice and change the info on both our breeder listing and on this page. 

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