Interesting conversation. I, too, have had some experience with Jungle Fowl and in particular the Red Jungle Fowl in conjunction with the Savannah River Ecology Lab. I lived and worked in Georgia for 10 years and became friends with a great old time breeder named Al Cummings, who has since passed away. One of the greats as far as breeding 'hard to breed fowl' and he told me in his life he had produced some of the 'first breeding's' in the US of several of the very rare pheasant like birds. I had the opportunity to visit his place and work with him several times while I lived there and before he passed away. Truly a great man.
Old Al, gave me a pair of Red Jungle Fowl that had been DNA tested for purity and implanted with a microchip for identification and that mine were now the fifth 'flock' of pure Red Jungle fowl in the US. Evidently they are able to detect the presence of 'western chickens' in the DNA and that even the zoos did not have pure stock and even where they originated they had largely become contaminated with other genetics. Red Jungle Fowl are very difficult to breed and will freely cross with any chicken which is why they have been crossed out so much to get more of them. One characteristic of Red Jungle Fowl is the eclipse molt. They will molt twice, once they will molt and grow in black feathers and the second molt will be the Wild Type pattern and will coincide with breeding season. I was told they imported some Red Jungle Fowl in to Georgia in the 60's with an attempt to create another game bird for hunting. One of the many areas they dropped the birds was in the Fitzgerald Georgia area (I lived in nearby Tifton for several years) and that one of the reasons the project didn't work is these birds had a tendency to migrate to farm areas and associate closely with livestock for food sources and would then stay relatively close to those food sources. Still today there are several feral populations of them on small tracts of land but when I went to see the birds there was no evidence of an eclipse molt.
On the jungle Fowl themselves. There are four recognized Jungle Fowl, all of which have recently been reclassified in the pheasant family. The four are Red, Gray, Green and Ceylon. I have raised the Reds and Grays and I can tell you, the real Grays are much more pheasant like than chickens. I witnessed mine fly up to a perch, hover in the air, turn then land on the perch. Chickens don't do this. Also, their vocalizations are very different. From what I have read, the Grays have been used in their country of origin to cross with native Fowl to create a male that has a very unique crow. Not sure why they do this, but they do and that this cross was sterile. I never tried to cross mine with chickens so I am not sure about this.
So, when people talk about having Red Jungle Fowl, it is usually some sort of cross as there are very very few pure lines left anywhere.
