About Sebastopol Farm

Everything sold here comes out of our own pens. We select for type before colour: a broad body carried level, a full smooth breast, and long well-curled feathers over back and wings. Colour is the easy part of a breeding programme. Type is not, and a beautiful colour on a poorly built bird is not worth having.

Temperament matters as much as feathering. Birds handled from hatch are calm around people and easy to keep alongside other poultry, and that is a large part of why people choose this breed. The breed facts page covers where Sebastopols came from and why they stayed scarce.

What we will not do is guess at a colour to make a sale. Lavender, blue and lilac sit close enough together that lighting alone can change what a bird looks like in a photograph, and plenty of birds get sold under the wrong name in complete good faith. If we are not certain, we will say so. The colours guide explains how the colours relate to each other.

Nor will we ship a bird into weather that is not safe for it. Heat is the bigger risk of the two, and a delayed shipment is better than a dead one. Birds leave Simsboro overnight, which keeps the journey as short as a live animal can reasonably travel. The shipping page covers the policy, and every state page carries the routing and the seasonal window for that part of the country.

Being in north Louisiana shapes the calendar more than anything else. Our own summers are the reason we are careful about heat: we are shipping out of it, not into it, and a bird that starts its journey in a Louisiana August has already had the worst of the day before the courier arrives.