Chicken Breed Focus - Colloncas

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sumi

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Colloncas are one of the original and most ancient breeds of the Mapuche Indian culture of Chile. The Colloncas (Chilean highlands) breed descended from the Rapanui race Pakeke (Seafarer stocks) including the Moa Garahuraju (multiple coloured spots) and Moa Totara (frizzled rumpless bantam). Colloncas De Artes is the composite breed resulting by the crossing of Quetro and Colloncas stock. In North America, the Colloncas De Artes were later refined into heirloom varieties of what we call Araucana. The so-called Ameraucana appears to be in large part a refined Quechua de Artes, without tufts but carrying the brown breasted demes of the Quetro.

They produce generous numbers of colourful eggs and like many South American fowl lay well into the winter. Some hens will produce a pale sea foam hued egg, others robin blue, ash grey and even lilac. A single pair of Colloncas may produce hens that each lay a different colour.

Colloncas are best known for innate tameness. They enjoy being held but unlike Silky fowl, which also enjoy human companionship, the Colloncas is completely winter hardy and can evade predators ably. It is a fairly strong flier and one of the more quiet breeds. Colloncas are very good at tick and fly control and are traditionally kept with sheep and llamas. It is advisable that the poultier keep at least two roosters with a flock of hens, three is the ideal number as Colloncas have strong pair bonds and the roosters work in cooperation to defend and chaperone hens and chicks. As a rule, true Colloncas roosters do not fight with one another and are never aggressive with people.




























All of the above pics by @Yashar



Do you own Colloncas? Are you a Colloncas breeder? If so, please reply to this thread with the your thoughts and experiences, including:

· What made you decide to get this breed?
· Do you own them for fun? Breeding? Some other purpose?
· What are your favorite characteristics about this breed?
· Post some pics of your birds; male/female, chicks, eggs, etc!

We have a bunch of other awesome breed-focus threads for you to enjoy. You can see all of them here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/chicken-breed-focus-project.975504/
 
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What an interesting breed (and interesting looking). I'd love to see some chick pictures or a photo of a lilac egg!
 
I've been looking for some for a while. I read yesterday that they are a tuftless Araucana. It would be nice to hear from the members who have them for clarification on this. It that is true, then it would be easier to locate unrelated stock.
 
Interesting.
In my country (Denmark) this breed (if I am correct) is simply called Araucana, the other is called "English Araucana", because apparently "English araucana" originated from Araucanas/Colloncas that sailors brought with them in their ships from South America. But some of the ships crashed into the rocks close to the english coast.
Some of the araucanas/colloncas survived and mixed wiith native chickens, which then is the foundation of the English Araucana :)

I just looked it up on wikipedia. Apparently the Araucana is originally actually a mix between Colloncas and a breed called Quetro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucana
 
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My Aracauna hen Pickle
 

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