The five toed gene is not unique to the Dorking; look at the Silkie, also a very ancient breed which nobody has tried yet to link to the Dorking family tree. ;-)
Walt, Columella recommends that people buying hens should choose red or dark colored ones with a square. meaty body, good size, white ears, no spurs on the hens, and if possible 5 toes. His writing is more of a general guideline for chicken husbandry, than a breed description, and would still be good advice today. It does not appear that all Italian fowl of the time had five toes, or there would have been no need to mention it... Columella's oft-cited chapter on chickens is an interesting read, it appears the Romans of his time raised both dwarf and "common" fowl and some fanciers kept large game breeds imported from Greece; crosses of the domestic Italian birds with the large Greek ones were also large bodied, but were better layers than their Greek sires. In other words, five toed chickens existed, but they were part of a mosaic of chicken types and sizes, and were not a fixed breed at that time.
Dorking breeders have been fond since the mid 1800s and the first poultry writing of constructing a pedigree for the Dorking dating back to Columella. I think this is charming and probably in parts of Britain many of the old country fowl did have ancestors dating back to the Roman occupation. But we should not forget that there were also chickens in England before the Romans invaded, used by the native British for cockfighting, as noted in Caesar's records. Moreover what the Roman settlers brought with them would most likely have been a variety of fowl, not just their five toed ones. Later invaders from Scandinavia appear to have brought their own chickens with them too, and contributed to the melting pot.
It is a romantic story, but I think it would be extreme wishful thinking to claim that the old Roman five toed fowl were the same breed as the Dorking of today, the same as the Dorking of the early 1800s which was substantially different, or even that they were a fixed breed at the time of the Romans. The five toed gene is dominant and anything cross bred to a pure five toed bird is going to have five toes as well - and half its own offspring, if it is crossed out again, will also have five toes. This is not an easy gene to lose. The introduction of a single five toed rooster for a season could tilt an entire village's chicken population well in the direction of being mostly five toed, within a few generations; if he was a Red Dorking, even if he was the purest possible modern Red Dorking, that would not make all his five toed great nieces and great great grand nephews Dorkings.
Just going geographically, another pocket of five toed chickens in France was found in the Picardy region, where the now extinct Poule de Saint Omer predominated in the town of Saint Omer. If we are going to credit the Romans for the spread of the five toed gene across Europe - which we can't be completely certain about in the first place - I find it more credible that the Houdan's five toes, like the Saint Omer's, came from descendents of the long Roman occupation of Gaul, than that they came from British Dorkings crossing the channel in the other direction in the 1600s or later.
Best - exop
Walt, Columella recommends that people buying hens should choose red or dark colored ones with a square. meaty body, good size, white ears, no spurs on the hens, and if possible 5 toes. His writing is more of a general guideline for chicken husbandry, than a breed description, and would still be good advice today. It does not appear that all Italian fowl of the time had five toes, or there would have been no need to mention it... Columella's oft-cited chapter on chickens is an interesting read, it appears the Romans of his time raised both dwarf and "common" fowl and some fanciers kept large game breeds imported from Greece; crosses of the domestic Italian birds with the large Greek ones were also large bodied, but were better layers than their Greek sires. In other words, five toed chickens existed, but they were part of a mosaic of chicken types and sizes, and were not a fixed breed at that time.
Dorking breeders have been fond since the mid 1800s and the first poultry writing of constructing a pedigree for the Dorking dating back to Columella. I think this is charming and probably in parts of Britain many of the old country fowl did have ancestors dating back to the Roman occupation. But we should not forget that there were also chickens in England before the Romans invaded, used by the native British for cockfighting, as noted in Caesar's records. Moreover what the Roman settlers brought with them would most likely have been a variety of fowl, not just their five toed ones. Later invaders from Scandinavia appear to have brought their own chickens with them too, and contributed to the melting pot.
It is a romantic story, but I think it would be extreme wishful thinking to claim that the old Roman five toed fowl were the same breed as the Dorking of today, the same as the Dorking of the early 1800s which was substantially different, or even that they were a fixed breed at the time of the Romans. The five toed gene is dominant and anything cross bred to a pure five toed bird is going to have five toes as well - and half its own offspring, if it is crossed out again, will also have five toes. This is not an easy gene to lose. The introduction of a single five toed rooster for a season could tilt an entire village's chicken population well in the direction of being mostly five toed, within a few generations; if he was a Red Dorking, even if he was the purest possible modern Red Dorking, that would not make all his five toed great nieces and great great grand nephews Dorkings.
Just going geographically, another pocket of five toed chickens in France was found in the Picardy region, where the now extinct Poule de Saint Omer predominated in the town of Saint Omer. If we are going to credit the Romans for the spread of the five toed gene across Europe - which we can't be completely certain about in the first place - I find it more credible that the Houdan's five toes, like the Saint Omer's, came from descendents of the long Roman occupation of Gaul, than that they came from British Dorkings crossing the channel in the other direction in the 1600s or later.
Best - exop
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