Information from is from Ultimate Fowl
Hennies:
Irish Hennies
History of the Hennies I got from Rick Bohn of California Gamefarm:
In about the year 1890, there was a strain of Hen Feathered Games, in the hands of cockers in & around Jackson, Michigan. They attracted attention from the fact that they were apparently invincible. While in the hands of John Neil & the Robson Brothers, they defeated all new comers & most of the old strains, that were represented at that time. In fact, when a well conditioned Hen Cock was theown into the pit, it was almost impossible to get a bet on him.
As to their breeding or origin, they came from a William Blair of Pontiac, Michigan, about 1880. Mr. Blair's fowl were believed to be descendants of a trio of Hennies, from an old Irishman. This old Irishman brought them over to Quebec in a wicker basket some years prior to this. Old Jack Neil kept Hennies from this stain until his death in 1921. About twenty-five percent of the Hennie stags will be long feathered until they molt out as cocks, nearly all then become hen feathered. Colors run from brown to black, with generally a few lighter colored feathers in hackle.
As a cross they usually put speed in another strain & produce a large percentage of Hen feathered males. In several instances crosses of Hennie have wiped out strains thought to be invincible.
Hennies by Paul Dawson
by Paul Dawson (1976)
I have been asked many times how the Hennies were made up - what crosses were used. A Hennie is one of the very few Strains of pure Game Fowls. They were first seen in India and they must have come out of the Jungles as did the Bankiva, and when you cross them they are no longer a Hennie. I believe they are just as the Maker made them. Their traits, their fighting style, their speed and cutting makes them as different from their long feathered cousins as daylight and dark. I have bred, fought and sold them for sixty five years so I feel I am qualified to write their history.
They came into England in the early fifteenth century and the good British breeders bred them to perfection and at one time they challenged all of England with their Hennies. From the Sports and Mutations they bred them in many different colors, including the beautiful Grouse bred by John Harris. They soon found their way into Spain where the Spanish bred them over their Brown and Grey Spanish. My good friend, the late John Thrasher, bred the Spanish just as they came from Spain and many of them came hen-feathered. The first Hennies were brought into this country by a party named Story and they proved to be great fighters in short heels as used along the East Coast. Mr. Chester A. Lamb imported the Black Thorne, also the brown Hennies in the early eighties. He bred them for fifty years and sold most all of the old time breeders, Hennie brood cocks. Mr. Lamb also imported the Kikilia from Ceylon.
The gene responsible for the hen feathering is not sex linked and is carried by either the male or female in different strengths. Since this gene is an Incomplete Dominant, Autosomal, about 1/4 of the stags produced from pure Hennies will be long feathered, 1/4 will be hen feathered, and the remainder will be of mixed feathering until their second year when they moult out completely hen feathered. From an article written in 1891 Hennies were very plentiful in Wales and Cornwall. There is an account of a main fought at Ponterfract (in the country of Yorkshire) in 1670 of hen-cocks v. long feathers.
The black hen-cocks of Wales were thought a fit present for a prince, and Pembrokeshire ( a country in Wales) once challenged all England with them. Hennies are an old-established and well-known variety of British game fowl, from which they differ chiefly in length, form and brilliancy of feather, the plumage of the male resembling that of the hens, hence the name of hen-cocks or hennies, and the more rounded, short and free from sheen or gloss they are in the hackle, cloak, and tail, in short the more hen-feathered they appear in neck, wings, body and tail the more they are entitled to claim purity of breed. They are generally lighter in bone than other cocks, having light corky bodies that appeared larger than their wieght at the scales, and on that account were never favorite match cocks with the old feeders at the "Cockpit Royal" who preferred cocks with more bone.
Henny Feathering Gene (Hf)
CHICKEN Summary :
The typical feathering of hens is part of their secondary sexual characteristics, produced by the action of estrogen. Much of this estrogen is produced from androgen in the ovaries by the enzyme aromatase. In certain strains of two breeds of chicken, namely the Sebright Bantam and the Golden Campine, roosters have the same feathering as hens, rather than the typical male form of feathering. This disorder is called henny feathering. It results from a mutation in the aromatase gene, causing thr gene to be expressed in the skin of both sexes. In males, this leads to abnormally high levels of estrogen, which in turn produces henny feathering. Henny feathering is interesting because it illustrates that not all mutations result in loss of activity; some mutations can cause a gene to be switched on in cells in which it is normally inactive.
Clinical Summary :
Apart from the hen-like feathers, males with this trait have a substantially reduced reproductive ability, probably because the increased levels of plasma estrogen inhibit spermatogenesis
(George et al., 1990)
Inheritance :
The aromatase gene is autosomal incomplete dominant gene, but the form of inheritance of henny feathering is not what is normally seen with an autosomal mutation, because the phenotype associated with the mutation
(henny feathering in males) can be seen only in males. This is an example of a sex-limited trait. Furthermore, the normal expression of the gene is seen only in females. Thus the two alleles at the one locus give rise to the two possible forms of sex-limited inheritance. The henny-feathering mutation also illustrates how two alleles can present more than one form of inheritance, depending on which trait is being considered. With respect to aromatase activity, gene action is co-dominant, i.e. heterozygotes have an enzyme activity mid-way between that of the two homozygotes. In this case, however, the activity in the skin of the normal homozygote is zero. With respect to feathering, the mutant is dominant, because heterozygotes produce sufficient enzyme in the skin, and hence sufficient oestrogen, to cause henny feathering.
Molecular Genetics :
This disorder is the first insertion mutation documented in any domesticated species of animal. In this case, it appears that the terminal repeat sequence of a retrovirus has been inserted into the 5' promoter region of the aromatase gene (Matsumine et al., 1991). This terminal repeat has a promoter of its own, which causes the aromatase gene to be switched on in atypical places, such as the skin of both sexes, giving rise to the henny- feathering trait in males. The actual peptide produced by the mutant allele is exactly the same as that produced by the normal allele, as we would expect for such a mutation.
Mapping Summary :
The Hf locus is located on the long arm of chromosome 1.
Above information from is from Ultimate Fowl.
Chris
