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Since there is a relatively small number of Serama outside it’s origin country of Malaysia, the Serama needs full attention to develop as a breed in the West.

Since 2003 breeders had to cope with many side effects as listed below.

# 1. The imported Serama came in as several local Malaysian types, for a beginner they were hard to distinguish, and due to the small numbers of each type of Serama being imported it made it impossible to maintain the different types even IF they could be distinguished.

# 2. Therefore in an early stage it was chosen that there would be one type to breed for which is pointed out as the standard of the ‘American Type’ Serama. So a mix of all types that first came in, there was not much of a choice.

# 3. Very early on the virtues of the Serama could easily evolve into problems.

The virtues of Serama are size, beauty and character. Because of its rarity and therefore relatively high price, birds were crossbred with small bantams and sold as ‘Malaysian Seramas’. This practice continues until today. The Serama will loose its gentle character and its unique desire for human attention when crossbred with other breeds and become flighty and in the worst case aggressive.

The other virtue size is revealing the boundaries nature gives us in only breeding for size. The micro Serama are not capable of sound reproduction, say less than 150 viable hatching eggs a year.

# 4. The type of the Serama, besides it’s small appearance, distinguishes it mostly from other breeds. The last years Type has been given maximum effort and attention because we all think that Type is most important. A breeder wrote: Type before Size before Color, which reflects our goal perfectly.

# 5. When looking at the several standards that are circulating the differences are so minor that we can say that the breeders are all already breeding according to ONE standard.

The only difference is that some claim they are breeding ‘original Malaysian’ Serama. They are correct if they imported a flock of at least 100 birds of each of the nine distinguishing Malaysian types themselves, and breed all these types. All breeders who have birds from the imports of J. Schexnayder and/or K.J. Theodore are breeding the ‘American Type’, as reflected in ONE standard instead of say many different standards.