Even though the bird-keeping has a long tradition in the Czech Republic - we have references of bird exhibitions from 80ďs of the 19th Century in Prague- there was no animal keepersď organisation until 1930. In this year, The Club of Exotic Bird Keepers was established. The first chairman was prof. Jiri Janda who later became a director of the zoological garden in Prague. In this time the Club had 59 members from the whole Czech Republic. In 1931 they started to publish a magazine and they also prepared their first exhibition in Prague. These exhibitions have since been held annually - with the exception of war time - until today. In 1933 they published a booklet "Budgerigar - Its Keeping and Breeding". Between 1935 and 1941, they published in their magazine the first series of articles "Foreign Birds Kept In Cages" written by one of our most noted experts MUDr. Karasek and F. Markovsky. By 1936, the Club's membership had grown to 377 members. In 1941 it was prohibited to publish the magazine and the activities of the club were minimal. They started to publish the magazine again in 1947. In 1949 there were 511 members and in 1951 more than 600 members. During 1960s, in the era of communist reorganization, the Club was forced to join any production factory or an institute according to the Soviet Union system. The effects were detrimental. In 1953 there was established in Jicin an ornithological group by the Agrostav factory and the Club was incorporated into the ZOO Prague. Both clubs were lead in a national scale. In 1956 the first meeting of Coloured Canary Committee of Judges was held. In 1957 a unified animal keeper's organization was established called The Czechoslovak Union of Small Agricultural Animal Keepers which was divided into different sections according to the specialization - the section of bird-keepers was the biggest. They started to publish a magazine "Chovatel" which is common for all sections but contains also a special part for the exotic bird keepers. Since 1969, the Czech Union of Animal Keepers has been a member of the World Ornithological Confederation (Confederation ornithologique mondiale - COM ) and its organisation of judges OMJ-COM (Ordre mondial des juges). In 1980 the Czech Union of Animal Keepers organized the 28th World Bird Championship in Olomouc. Also, every two years in this town the EXOTA Olomouc is held - a national exhibition of exotic birds with international participance.