Historic Presence of Jungle Fowl in the American Deep South

[Florida Bullfrog]

Hello,

I have a two fold question. First, can anyone either tell me about or point me to resources discussing whether red jungle fowl, RJF hybrids, or closely derivative breeds, were used as farm or game chickens in the American deep south in the late 1800s or early 1900s?

Second, to what degree are American game bantams or American game chickens derivative of red jungle fowl, and what behavioral traits do those American breeds share with RJF?

Here’s why I ask. My family has lived in Florida since the early 1800s. Specifically on the north central and north parts of the peninsula. The environment is sub tropical in those areas. My family were backwoods farmers and hunters until the mid 1900s. Our ethnic group is called the Florida Cracker (yes that’s our real name, you can wiki it). I was raised by my grandparents of that older generation. When I was a child they gifted me with my own chickens. I raised normal breeds such as Road Island Reds and Americanas.

When I was in middle school an uncle gifted me with the kind of chickens my ancestors traditionally raised on their backwoods farms and what they always had growing up. They were only generically called “game chickens.” No other name was known or given to them.

They behaved differently than my other chickens. They roosted in the trees at night. The hens wouldn’t nest in the nest boxes in the coop, but instead they hid their nests in the woods and on fence lines. The rooster was more protective of the hens and would even call them over to get bugs instead of eat them himself. Because of how they hid their nests they weren’t great egg chickens but they were great at surviving free range. All they really needed was a water source.

Now many years later I own my own farm in the Florida woods. I’m looking for those traditional Florida homestead “game” chickens but no one I know has them anymore. I want them both for the nostalgia and for the practicality of having a more predator resistant bird.

Physically the pictures I can find that look just like them are Indian Red Jungle Fowl. The color and size are right. But I’ve also found some pictures of American game bantams that look like them as well. And some Old English bantams.

I cannot recall the leg color of our “game” chickens. I do know they never had an “eclipse” molt based on what I’ve read about eclipse molts in the jungle fowl thread here. Their personalities weren’t overly skittish of humans but they preferred to keep their distance. More than anything their roosting in trees and hiding their nests seemed defining. They reminded me of little wild turkeys in chicken form in their habits. Or maybe a better way to put it is that they had some ways about them more like guineas than chickens.

I do have some red jungle fowl chicks on reserve from a farm in central Florida. I don’t care if they’re pure or not, I only care about them approximating what I grew up with and what my ancestors may have been keeping in 1900.

Any ideas what a Florida Cracker “game” chicken might be? One uncle called them “Spanish” game chickens. Many of our traditional domestic animals such as the Cracker cow and Cracker horse are directly related to livestock the Spaniards brought that subsequently adapted to Florida. Would there be reason to believe the Spanish had access to jungle fowl-like chickens that adapted to here? Or were we perhaps raising some form of wild phase American game chicken?

 

[JShubin]

Some gamefowl I bred that look similar to the RJF

 

[varidgerunner]

Wild Red Jungle fowl were never raised as farm stock in the US. They were stocked by South Carolina Fish and Game as a game animal, an idea that never quite took off, but the chickens remain in an isolated population.

Gamefowl, (bankivoid gamefowl) have had recent (in last 400 years) outcrosses to WRJF, and share many traits. Most feral populations in Florida and Hawaii are descended from escaped gamefowl.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I’ve got two sets of improved Crackers growing out. One set is of 8 and their mother will disappear with them for a day or two at a time between sighting around the house. They seem resilient and well formed.

The second set is of 14 that I’m keeping in a large coop that I’m moving with my truck like a chicken tractor. Their mother is the rarest prize I have, a straight combed, half-aseel that came out looking like a pure Cracker just larger. Her father carried the straight combed recessive gene. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, she grew up deep in the woods with no human care for several months of her life. So her free range credentials are proven, but I’m not letting her out of the coop, likely ever. She gets fresh vegetation and dirt by me moving the coop. Lanky the cock grew up free range since chickhood.

When these chicks are old enough I’ll turn them out to see how they do. If they do as awesome as I think they will, I plan on keeping this pair together for their natural lives and constantly spam chicks.

 

[Eggscaping]

Welcome, welcome to the group!! I'm sure you will find someone here with some bit or two of information...it's a huge resource of 'chicken-information-gifted' folks. I, myself, can't help you a bit, but your wonderful post (lots of folks have a bit of a typo or misspelling in something that long, but I'm a proofreader and your post is - near as I can tell - perfect as well as informative, articulate, and interesting!) caught my interest.
And now I'm going to watch with great attention whatever answers you get, for I am very intrigued and want to know more! Thank you for sharing, and again...welcome!

 

[JShubin]

I remember the dominant rooster well, and he looked identical to your top rooster.

Will gamefowl roost in trees and hide their nests?

oh ya...If they arent penned in a cage they'll sleep way up in the trees. like 20+ft up...
And I've had several hatch chicks in the creek area on my property... deep in the bushes.

 

[Ghosty]

My games free range and go in a coop, but it takes a little training. I do have a roomy coop, though. Of course, if they aren't penned, you can only have one cock. If you have a big farm, maybe multiple flocks, with their own range. If you don't separate the stags, they will have it out. Sometimes mine lay in the nestbox, but they also like to fly through my shop window and find a hidey spot there. I found three eggs on the top shelf in there today.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Or to put it another way, whether my current flock are Crackers or not in origin, if they’re made into useful homestead birds that lay decent eggs, have hens that are big enough to whip hawks, and are yet still light and agile enough to live feral in the woods, while keeping the RJF look, then they are true Crackers indeed. A bird that has the look and lives the life is more of a true Cracker gamefowl than one that is confirmed of old Florida genetic stock but has evolved into something not practical.

Using the bulldog analogy again, if a pure bred bulldog from 1820 looks and acts different than a modern English bulldog that is a direct and pure descendant of the 1820 bulldog, and another bulldog is created by outcrossing a pure bulldog to a similar breed such as an American pit bull, the offspring of the crossing are truly more proper bulldogs if they look and act like the bulldog from 1820. That’s how I feel about the Crackers.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

You're going to hate me for this Mr. Bullfrog. I apologize and accept your retribution.

In my opinion, the Cracker line cannot be improved upon. It is what it is through centuries effort by two master breeders, Mother Nature and Darwinian Selection. If their history is what you say it is, then it is a significant cultural treasure that should be protected from introgression, both intentional and accidental, at all costs.

So there it is. That's been bottled up inside me for two years.

Agreed, but here’s why I’m doing it:

I can’t confirm the origins of my current flock I got 4 years ago, which is something I’ve been upfront about in this thread. Back then I didn’t know how to talk about gamefowl with strangers and I accidentally scared off the old farm couple who had them. Early on I let them know my profession, and I think they became concerned that my questions about whether these birds where junglefowl or gamefowl sent them the wrong vibes. They would never tell me where they got them from or how long they had them after repeated contacts. The same is true of my great uncle, who was a cocker and would have known everything there was to know about the family birds. Because he was a cocker until the day he died last year, he wouldn’t talk to me. He was concerned if he said the wrong thing I would turn him in. Which has some precedence I suppose because his brother-in-law, my grandfather who raised me, busted him for poaching gopher tortoises where my grandfather was a game and fish law enforcement officer. When the great uncle died other family members more contemporaneous to his generation opened up some and told me a lot about how the birds were raised. As a child I was basically country walking the birds for my great uncle and didn’t know it. I was lead to believe the “game chickens” weren’t fighters, but in fact they were.

So I’m not sure if my current flock is of old Florida stock, hatchery junglefowl, a lost line of Frank Gary American game bantams, or highly inbred or mini line Blueface or McLean hatch American games that have RJF traits coming out through a genetic quirk. Nor do I know whether the old Florida birds were Spanish game mixes, junglefowl mixes, American game mixes, or all of the above. All I know is that RJF-looking gamefowl were common on Florida homesteads for a couple hundred years at least and they lived feral. Everything else is my speculation.

By recollection, my grandfather, and an elderly retired judge who has seen my flock, both agreed what I have is identical to what they grew up with and that the Cracker homestead gamefowl were only half the size of a traditional coop layer. Yet my own flock in childhood seemed larger in body to be more like small-sized American games, only slightly smaller than my layers. But I cannot account for how a child’s memory makes things seem larger that they were. Recently I saw some old family property and the shed and boat ramp on a lake that I remember to have been large clearly is not.

I don’t think a flock of red gamefowl on a Florida homestead 100 years ago could be improved on. But is that what I have? Or are my birds just an approximation? I don’t know.

Therefore, I’m ok with brining in American games that are also pretty close to the Cracker birds in look and identical in behavior and mixing them in to my flock. The Americans I am using grow up wild on a series of wood lots and are only brought in to tie cords and pens after adolescence. 4 years ago had I seen a flock of these Americans doing their thing in the woods, I would have said “yes l, that’s them!” Except for their size, which is quite large.

At the end of the day, a Cracker gamefowl should be a useful and practical bird. If it has lost some of its usefulness due to many years of inbreeding, it should have its blood refreshed. I feel the same about bulldogs. Bulldogs should be functional. If decades of pure breeding makes them something different than what they once were, then they should be outcrossed to restore functionality.

My little Crackers are just too small to be very useful as homestead fowl.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

After the last update I lost some of the black banders. Around 8 survive, of those they’re all pullets except the smaller of the two stags also lives. One pullet has a floppy tail and I will cull her if it doesn’t correct itself. Her father briefly had a floppy tail then grew out of it.

This morning I tried to corral up the pullets and coop them with their mother and father and they immediately began to beat each other up. So I had to turn them back out.

I think its the aseel in them that’s making the pullets so intolerant of each other in confinement. They’ve been having scars on their heads on and off for the past month and I thought it was the turkey doing it, but now I see they’re doing it to each other and just not doing it as bad where they have room on free range to spread out.

My plan is to make another batch of black banders this fall. I need some more stags to choose from. When I get a stag I like, I’ll breed it back to the mother and have Lanky preside over his daughters and begin line breeding each branch. I see that a full flock of pullets will have to be kept free range, so I’ll have to rotate Lanky to free range.