It’s really cruel to punish your clown for honking, no matter how loud its honking is. Nose-honking is a clown’s instinctive expression of joy and excitement, and yelling at your clown, spraying it with water, or using shock collars will only add to the problem. Clowns thrive on attention, whether positive or negative, and making a huge fuss when your clown honks will only encourage it to honk more and louder.
Instead, the best way to discourage nose-honking is to ignore it. Remember to praise your clown when you notice it making balloon animals, riding in its clown car, or doing any other quiet activity. But remember, it’s natural for clowns to honk, and you can’t prevent it altogether.
Alright, this may be out of line, but there’s an elephant in the comically-undersized room and it’s high time we addressed it. Simply put, breed standards have become stringent to the point where inbreeding, and all the health issues that come with it, is rampant in the clown-showing circuit. Confused? Let me show you an example.
This is what a Belgian Spurthigh looked like in the late 1800s. Like most breeds in the Japing group, it was bred for function over form – those distinctive bony spurs on its hips, for example, protected the pelvis during particularly intense pratfalls. But over the last 100 years, we’ve exaggerated these features to a grotesque degree – take a look at the modern Belgian Spurthigh.
A single-minded focus on aesthetics has turned the breed into a warped caricature of its past self, and a veritable time bomb of health issues. Cataracts and hip dysplasia are so common that newly-hatched chucklets have to be tested for them, and the hip spurs are so pronounced in utero that they run the risk of puncturing the egg sac. Let me emphasize that again: in their current state, they cannot lay eggs naturally – to prevent the eggs from puncturing themselves, you have to give the mother a C-section and pull the strings of egg sacs out like a bunch of handkerchiefs tied together. This is not a state any living thing should exist in.
But how did it get this bad, you ask? Blame clown-showing authorities like the American Kook Club. The breed standards they set defining “ideal” clowns have gradually called for more and more pronounced features. When individuals win big events like Jokesminster, every breeder of that breed wants to to have the winner sire a litter with one of their clowns. When everyone is focused on a single, homogeneous ideal, inbreeding runs rampant and the breed’s gene pool shrinks dramatically.
So what do we do now? Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy solution. Preserving high-risk breeds may require crossing over with related breeds (in the case of the Belgian Spurthigh, we’ve seen some success with Andalusian Fool mixes). Clown breeders must continue to put pressure on the AKC and other authorities to prioritize health when defining breed standards. The clown breeds we know and love are in danger, but I believe that if we work together, we can continue to have happy and healthy clowns for generations to come.
When you’re breeding your clowns remember that TROUPE STATUS is as important as sex when breeding! Clowns do not have a true ‘gender’ the way we consider it, but male and female sexed clowns have one of three mating positions in the troupe.
These positions are
BLANC/JOEY (Joey is the American term) (non-egg bearing)
AUGUSTE (egg bearing)
and
CONTRA-AUGUSTE (promotes hormone facilitation)
Do NOT listen to breeders who tell you that you can breed two auguste clowns or two joeys with a good result. Double august/double joey clown eggs are almost never viable! For best results you want an August and a Joey, preferably with a pair-accepted contra-august!
Also be certain that your clowns have access to a spoon that is large enough to bear the egg!
While wild clowns will often use tiny spoons, as these are easier to forage, these are not efficient for breeding purposes! While carrying the egg, the August will be performing a series of maneuvers to impress the Joey, which are meant to look, comically, as though the egg is nearly being dropped. But mistakes do happen, and if the egg breaks your August will not bear an egg until the next breeding season!
Novelty spoons sold for the purpose of clown-breeding may look whimsical and increase the hilarity of the courtship display, but they decrease your chances for a successful season!
Something like the above spoon should not be used if you plan on a successful breeding, and if you’re not planning to raise young clowns then you shouldn’t be giving your clowns spoons at all! An unsuccessful courtship can cause undue stress on all parties, and no one wants a sad clown!
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