American Game and Red Jungle Fowl

[Silexian]

I personally prefer Asiatic and game breeds over most. Especially Brahma and Sumatra under Asiatic breeds.

I have had Brahmas in the past. They were good foragers. The hens laid a fair amount of eggs. They went broody and were good mothers. The roosters can be kept together, with minimal fighting. They can be butchered young to produce fryers. Or allow them to grow out to roasting size.

 

[mons537]

In my experience the jungle fowl offered by hatcheries are some blend of American Game and Bantam. Most of your classic American Games of known lineage are not available as hatching eggs. Understand that these birds come into lay in the spring, they lay maybe a dozen eggs, and then they set on them and hatch them. If you take the eggs away, they will lay maybe twenty and shut off, some of them will shut off if they have any missing eggs, until you move them to a different pen that doesn't have an egg eating predator in their mind. I swear they can count. Most breeders let them raise their chicks, two to four broods a year, and they want to see chicks mature so they can select future breeding stock, and sell their surplus as young adults. Purchase price can be upsetting to folks used to hatchery birds, but remeber, you are buying a bird that could have a twenty year productive lifespan. Hatcheries do well with boosted egg production, it fits their business model much better. I once crossed leghorn with American game. They would lay earlier, and lay a lot more eggs before going broody,(maybe twenty to thirty) a few didn't go broody. Seeing birds, that are known to lay maybe fifty eggs per year tops, offered commercially makes me immediately question purity.

I don't have any American Games, there are various groups that you could join to find some. I know that pure Morgan whitehackles are very hard to come by, you might easier find a similar colored bird in some strains of Ruble Hatch.

Try searching gamefowl hatching eggs on ebay. That's a good place to start. I raise gamefowl myself. Oakridge http://auction.oakridgegamefarm.net/ is another place.