Historic Presence of Jungle Fowl in the American Deep South

[Florida Bullfrog]

Looking for love in all the wrong places. This is where the bobcat killed most my other turkeys, but this one surviving hen wandered the farm last spring looking for a wild gobbler to breed her. She apparently found one but her chicks hatched during a night of heavy rains and none survived. She’s trying again this year. She’ll walk the whole 40 acres looking for a gobbler and show up on trail camera in the thickest of cover where she ought not be going.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

She’ll keep on until she get’s caught or bred. Whatever happens, hopefully it will be on camera.

Trail camera pics show that the chickens used the gap in the net to come and go at will to get water and hit the feeder. But when I got home near dark I hadn’t checked the cams at that point and only saw the rooster with two hens back in the thick. I presumed the third hen had got caught, but she was likely just already roosted. However, fearing it was just a matter of time before the few remaining chickens returned home where Indo my oriental game cross would likely kill Erik, I went ahead and caught him. I wasn’t able to catch the hens, but I suspect in the morning they’ll follow the sound of crowing and end up back at the house.

Erik is now with a F4 American game bantam that I will pair him to in order to make a second line of red eared AGBs (see my thread on my AGB project).

When I’m done with that, I will probably pair him to this hen, which is my best pure Cracker hen and the only pure Cracker I’ve produced that’s made a pure red ear with no white on it. I am currently using her on my AGB project.

 

[Bigandlittles]

Not Ute exactly the you re looking for but I I fin this article that talks about them releasing rjf in the southeastern United States.
https://bioone.org/journalArticle/Download?urlid=10.1656/058.018.0101

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Daytime pic of Erik in his fly pen.

The remaining hens from the experiment have behaved… weirdly. Two hens with magenta bands walked back up to the house and remain here. The red band hen that walked to the house returned to the woods and has vanished. Non-banded hens appear and disappear. Truth is I do not know how many hens are running around the woods now. Up to five may be. It is possible that they are setting on clutches. I’ll just have to watch my trail cams and note which ones I see in person.

No dice on catching the bobcat(s) so far. I have a camera on each trap set. Every 2-3 days one of two bobcats use the log but they don’t step on the treadle.

This is the second prong of my Cracker improvement project:

Lanky my other half-Cracker, half-American stag is cooped with a flock of 4 pullets that are 3/4 Cracker, 1/4 American. They’re way too young to be laying. But once they start this summer I want to cross him to them. I also want to cross Lanky to a half-American, half-aseel pullet I have.

 

[Bigandlittles]

That fire red and black roo is beautiful. Are you saying that is a wild breed of chicken?

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

That fire red and black roo is beautiful. Are you saying that is a wild breed of chicken?

They have wild chickens (red junglefowl) as some sort of component of their genetic makeup.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Terrorfowl Super Free Range Survival Chickens Spring 2023 Update!

Update on the project here.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I never caught the bobcat. He’s still around.

I haven’t seen a trace of the hens that returned to the woods. I presume they’re gone.

Here’s the future of my Cracker improvement project. The resulting offspring should be 1/4 junglefowl hybrid, 1/4 aseel, and 1/2 American gamefowl.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

She ended up sitting on 14 eggs and she hatched them all yesterday. I feel good about this batch likely being what I want the Crackers to evolve into, which will also likely be more authentic to what the birds were in an earlier era.

 

[troyer]

I love this, they even look wild!