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COUNTRY ORIGIN: France

CATEGORY: Soft feather

EGG COLOUR: Tinted (Sitters)

Originated in the village of Faverolle, in Northern France, during the second half of the nineteenth century. This breed was created for its dual purpose qualities. Its make‑up includes such breeds as the Dorking, Houdan and Cochin, Light Brahma, Polish, Crevecoeur, and the European Five Toed Fowl. Imported into Great Britain in 1886 and to Germany a decade later. Both French and German varieties were imported into South Africa, but now it appears that the German variety (Lachshuhn) dominates our show benches. Judges of this breed should be aware of both breed directions when judging this breed.

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COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN:

The Black ‑ Australia

The White ‑ South Africa

The Golden ‑ South Africa

The Wheaten Laced ‑ South Africa

The Blue ‑ South Africa

The Blue Splash – Splash

CATEGORY: Soft Feather

EGG COLOUR: Tinted (Sitters)

HISTORY

The Australorp is a production‑bred Australian Black Orpington. The original Black Orpington was produced by William Cook of England and later specimens of this breed were exported to Australia where it was converted, by selective breeding, from a purely exhibition breed to a highly popular commercial one. The Black Australorp in South Africa all originate from importations from Australia roundabout 1910.  South Africa holds the distinction of having originated all the other colour varieties of Australorps. The White Australorp originated from sports (mutations) from the Blacks.  They were admitted to the South African standards in 1939 on applications from two breeders, the late Mr. N.H. Addison of Middelburg, Cape, and the late Mr. Dan Jacobs of Alberton. The Golden Australorp was perfected by the late Prof. A.M. Gericke at the Pretoria University, and admitted to the South African standards in 1949. The Wheaten Laced were produced from sports bred from pure Australorps by Mrs. Myrtle Phillips of Tarkastad and were admitted to the South African standards in 1954. The Blue was perfected by Mr. A.A. Luckhoff of Vereeniging after years of selection from Blue individuals originating from mating’s of Black and White Australorp.

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COUNTRY of ORIGIN:Chile

CATEGORY: Soft feather

EGG COLOUR: Blue or green (Sitters)

When the Spaniards arrived in South America, bringing with them the light Mediterranean breeds, they found that the indigenous Indians had domestic fowls which soon crossbred with the incomers. Notable for their fierce resistance to the Spaniards however, were the Indians of the Arauca province of northern Chile who were never conquered. The name Araucana for the breed is derived therefore from that part of the world where the South American and European fowls had the least opportunity to interbreed.

The Araucana breed standard in the British Isles is generally as envisaged by George Malcolm who created the true-breeding lavender Araucana, amongst other colours, in Scotland during the 1930s. Araucanas are layers of strong-shelled eggs, blue or green eggs having been reported from South America from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. These are unique in that their colour permeates throughout the shell.

The tufted gene is a lethal gene, meaning that if a chick receives two copies of the gene, it will die in the shell before hatching. Therefore, it is impossible to hatch only tufted Araucanas, since any living bird has only one copy of the gene. If you mate tufted to tufted, you will get 1/2 tufted, 1/4 clean faced, and 1/4 embryos dead in the shell. If you mate tufted to clean-faced, you will get 1/2 tufted and 1/2 clean-faced, but more living birds. Bottom line: if half of your hatchlings are tufted, consider yourself very lucky.

When the Araucana was first introduced to breeders worldwide in the mid-20th century, the genetics that produced tufts were recognized to also cause chick mortality.Two copies of the gene cause nearly 100% mortality shortly before hatching. The tufted gene is dominant, however. Because no living Araucana possesses two copies of the tufted gene, breeding any two tufted birds leads to half of the resulting brood being tufted with one copy of the gene, a quarter being clean-faced with no copy of the gene, and a quarter of the brood dead in the shell, having received two copies of the gene.In the decades to follow, most breeders took one of two tacks: either to preserve the old style of bird, or to breed out the tufts while increasing productivity.

Because the tufted gene is lethal, as described above, it is good to have non-tufted birds in the breeding pen. If only tufted birds are bred, quite a few chickens will die in the shell before they hatch. If tufted birds are bred with non-tufted birds, more eggs will hatch and with a bigger hatch of tufted offspring.

The gene for tufts has “variable penetrance” meaning that the type and degree of tuftedness in tufted birds will vary greatly. Some will have one tuft, some will have two, some will have even tufts and some will have unbalanced tufts. But every tufted bird, no matter how their tufts look, carries the tufted gene. A one-tufted bird may produce plenty of two-tufted offspring, and vice versa.

In 1976, the first standards for the breed were accepted by the APA, conforming to the traditional style.This was followed, in 1984, by a second standard for the “improved” variety.

The gene for blue eggs is dominant, so the term “Easter Egger” is used to describe birds of mixed breeding that produce such eggs. Unfortunately, these mixed breeds are often incorrectly labelled as Araucanas or Ameraucanas, and marketed to backyard poultry hobbyists who are not aware of the difference.

In short, the differences are as follows:

• USA and Canada Araucana – tufts (lethal allele), rumpless, blue eggs, willow legs and yellow skin (with exceptions)
• US Ameraucana – beards and muffs (NO lethal gene), with tail feathers, blue eggs, slate legs and white skin
• British, Irish, New Zealand, Asian, Japanese, Russian, Dutch, French, Spanish, Bellarus, Ukrainian, Scandinavian, Argentinian, Chilean, South African, Pacific Islands, Brazilian, Mexican, Peruvian, Arabic Nations, Indian, Pakistan, Nepalese and Australian Araucana – beards, muffs and crest, with tail feathers, blue eggs, slate or olive/willow legs and grey/white skin
• Easter Egger – variable traits

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COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Great Britain

CATEGORY: Soft feather

EGG COLOUR: Brown (Sitters)

The Orpington: William Cook established a poultry business in 1869 at St Mary Cray, a village near the town of Orpington in Kent. Here he bred various poultry, made hen houses, and stocked all the necessary appliances and equipment to sell to his main intended customers, the many thousands of domestic poultry keepers in London and the surrounding suburban towns. He launched his ‘Black Orpington’ in 1886, a breed he made from a mix of Black Minorca, Black Plymouth Rock, and Black Langshan. His first Black Orpingtons were relatively tight feathered, and looked like today’s Australorps. These were followed by White Orpingtons in 1889, made from a different mix of breeds, and which were also much tighter feathered, and with a longer tail than the White Orpingtons of today.

The first Orpingtons, which looked more like the Orpingtons we find today, were made shortly afterwards, in the early 1890s, by Joseph Partington, a fancier in the north-west of England, at Lytham, Lancashire. He realised that most show judges tended to give top prizes to the biggest birds in a class, so he started to make a separate strain, initially by Black Cochin x Black Langshan matings, followed by selective breeding to get rid of the shank and foot feathering. His assessment of show judges was correct, and his birds were soon beating Cook’s strain around the shows, so other fanciers either bought birds from Partington, or made their own in a similar way. Although Cook complained about the way ’his’ breed had been changed by other people, he realised he couldn’t stop the popular trend, and when Partington died in 1901, Cook bought birds at the dispersal auction. 

Partington, and the other exhibitors and judges who supported the big, fluffy, but less productive type Orpingtons have often been criticised over the past century or so by poultry writers for ’ruining’ a previously good utility breed. While there is certainly some truth in this attitude, it ignores the economic and social realities affecting the UK poultry scene before things were forced to change by greater events in 1914. Before 1914 there was no real commercial poultry industry in the UK. Table bird and eating egg production was hard work for little profit. If any ’big money’ could be made at all in any activity concerning poultry, it was in, or connected to, the show halls. Show winners sold for potentially life changing sums, including the teams of Black Orpingtons sold by Joseph Partington the first few times he exhibited them, most going for £30 each. Remember, this was at a time when typical manual labourers earned about £1 per week in wages! This is why so many people bred exhibition poultry, that is, almost everyone who had a back garden or could rent an allotment (a council-owned garden plot). If they bred a show winner they could sell it for the equivalent of a few months’ wages, and in the meantime, they could still sell any bird bred, which was not good enough to show or sell as potential  breeding stock, for at least ’layer prices’.

Cook’s next variety was the Buff Orpington, made from crosses of Buff Cochins with other breeds. They quickly became popular, and any similar looking chickens were hastily renamed as a ’Buff Orpington’, and offered for sale at double the previous price, including the entire population of an older localised breed, the Lincolnshire Buff, which effectively went extinct within a few months.

Two more colour varieties of Orpingtons were made in William Cook’s lifetime: Jubilee Orpingtons in 1897 and Spangled Orpingtons in 1899. Both went extinct during the 1920s and ’30s, but have been remade since the 1960s. 

William Cook died in 1904, when only 55 years old. There had been family arguments, which resulted in several separate businesses being established after his death. Cook’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth Jane Cook, inherited the original company at St Mary Cray, which she continued to run under the name ’W. Cook & Sons’ until she closed it down in 1934, apparently being unable or unwilling to adapt to the then rapidly changing poultry industry. Cook’s eldest son, William Henry, had established (before the family arguments)  a branch of the family business at Scotch Plains, New Jersey, in America, which was later run by youngest son Percy Cook, after he had been in the Royal Navy for some years. William Henry Cook returned to the UK, and set up a separate business at Tubbenden Lane, Orpington, which lasted until about 1948. The second son, Albert Loxley Cook set up and managed a South African branch, with a sales office at Marshall Square West, Johannesburg, and farms at Syferfontein, near Johannesburg, and Stamford Hill, Durban, Natal. Cook’s younger daughter (name not found) married Arthur C. Gilbert, who had a poultry farm at Wilmington, fairly near St Mary Cray and Orpington.

Arthur seems to have remained on friendly terms with all members of the otherwise feuding Cook family.

The other two significant varieties of Orpingtons were the Blue and the Cuckoo, both of which were initially made by Arthur Gilbert and launched in 1907.

Orpington bantams were not very good, or very popular until after about 1950, although there had been much earlier attempts, those known being Buffs by John Wharton shown at Carlisle in the north of England in 1899, and Blacks and Whites, shown by Emil Khn at Leipzig, Germany, in 1912. In the modern era, the correct size of Orpington bantams has often been a controversial topic, with different opinions existing regarding the best compromise between birds both type enough to be an ‘Orpington’ and small enough to be a ’Bantam’. 

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COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Great Britain

CATEGORY: Soft feather

EGG COLOUR: Tinted (Sitters)

Its purely British ancestry makes the Dorking one of the oldest of domesticated fowls in lineage. A Roman writer, who died in A.D. 47, described birds of Dorking type with five toes, and no doubt such birds were found in England by the Romans during the invasion under Julius Caesar (55 B.C.). By judicious crossings, and by careful selection, the Darking or Dorking breed was established.

Dorkings were mentioned occasionally over the intervening centuries, for example being sold at Dorking market in 1683 and 1824, but as far as present day fanciers are concerned, the story only picks up again at about 1850, when poultry shows started, which required standardised plumage colours and patterns for exhibitors and judges to agree upon. Previously, a few farmers had bred uniformly coloured flocks so their birds would be identifiable locally in case of theft. White and Cuckoo Dorkings were probably established for this reason, and ‘Old Red and Tawnies’ were known and named, along with ‘Japans’, black Dorkings with gold or silver hackles. ‘Red Speckles’ were also known, and could be either marked like present day Spangled O.E.G. or Speckled Sussex. Indeed, Lewis Wright noted that before 1850 the breast feathering of almost all Dorking cocks (except Cuckoos and Whites) had white speckles.

Wright also wrote at length about John Douglas, who established a consistent coloured strain of Dark Dorking, starting in 1857 when he crossed his variable coloured Dorking hens with a cock of unknown ancestry he had imported from India, which was an almost perfect exhibition Dark Dorking cock in terms of colour, size and type, just lacking the 5th toe, which was rectified after a few years of selective breeding. Silver Grey Dorkings were stabilised with their present pattern, particularly in respect of the salmon breast on hens, by crosses with Lord Hill’s strain of Silver Duckwing O.E.G., which were recorded as being used by some Dorking men, including Oswald Cresswell of Hereford, who tried this cross in 1868.

Dorkings remained a popular exhibition and practical table breed until the outbreak of war in 1914, and then declined. They only survived through to the present day because of the dedication of a few breeders, until a new generation of poultry breed enthusiasts appeared in the 1970s. The bantam version of the breed has appeared sporadically since the 1890s, but has never been very popular, indeed there are probably more of them, and in more colour varieties, now in 2012 (in the UK at least) than at any time in the past.

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Amended June 2012

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ORIGIN: Ancestral stock from Spain (Island of Minorca), developed into a standard breed in England.

CATEGORY: Soft feather

EGG COLOUR: White (Non-sitters)

The fowls which were imported to England from Spain in the year 1780 to 1820 were rather small and with much smaller ear lobes than the later standard Minorcas. They remained virtually unchanged for about a century, as valued layers of extra-large chalk-white eggs, until the competitive atmosphere of the British poultry show scene prompted fanciers to try some crosses to improve their chances of success in the 1880’s. Indeed, until about 1870 Minorcas were only kept in the south-west of England by breeders that were former Spanish and French prisoners of war, who decided to settle here when released from captivity as part of various colonial wars, as well as the 1807-1812 Peninsular War. Minorcas were virtually unknown north of Gloucestershire or east of Wiltshire.

The first series of crosses were made with White-faced Spanish, which had long been a very popular breed in the Bristol area. This was obviously done to increase lobe size, but the breed obviously required subsequent back-crosses to restore the red face. Minorcas were exported to the US and Canada in about 1885, and fanciers in those countries have continued with the type fashionable then, with smaller lobes and a bigger, more fanned tail, than has since become the norm in the UK, Germany, and most other countries. The second series of crosses was with large black breeds such as Langshans and Orpingtons, and was done by fanciers in the north of England. By 1890 Minorcas of large size and with big lobes, were being shown all over the UK, indicating that the North Country and Bristol breeders had exchanged stock.

They became a very popular breed from about 1900 until 1930, with several regional Minorca clubs in addition to the main UK Minorca Club formed in 1888. There was even a Utility Minorca Club formed in 1925 to promote the smaller, more productive type. This was followed by a gradual decline in popularity, with amalgamations of all those clubs to a single UK Minorca Club in 1962.

Black has always been the main colour variety of Minorcas, but other colours do, or did, exist. Whites have been known at least as far back as the 1880s, but have never been popular. This is probably because competitive exhibitors, who wanted something similar, regarded the White Leghorn classes as ‘the only game in town’. Buff Minorcas were only ever bred in the US, and were mainly bred and promoted by the Lindgren Brothers of California, circa 1905-25. A barred variety was made in Germany, but was never accepted as a Minorca. This variety was standardised as a separate breed, the ‘Deutsche Sperber’, where they still exist, but are very rare. Blue Minorcas were known in Devon, England as far back as 1890, but were not widely bred until promoted by another Devon fancier, Herbert Whitley in the 1920s. He had an extensive collection of poultry breeds and other livestock, concentrating in ‘Blue’ varieties in all of them. A classic English eccentric! Rose-combed Black Minorcas were made in both the UK and US by crossing with Black Hamburghs, but few have been seen since 1940.

Minorca Bantams were first seen in about 1900, but remained very rare until the 1920-1940 period. It can be a problem, but a fascinating problem for enthusiasts, to combine Minorca characteristics such as the long back, strong boned shanks, and relatively large lobes and comb, on a bird small enough to be a satisfactory ‘Bantam’. This conundrum may have limited their popularity, along with the difficulties of keeping the lobes perfectly smooth and white, and the face red. Judges appreciate the skill required, so a good Minorca Bantam has an excellent chance of going on to win top show awards over the other ‘Best of Breeds’.

It can be reliably stated that South African stock originally came from England.

The Pile variety was bred by the late Mr. Eustace Schoultz from Pretoria. He did this by crossing ‘sports’ from black Minorcas(black with some red on the back and shoulders) with pure white Minorcas. Over a few years and with careful selection, he succeeded to establish the Piles.

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Amended June 2012
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