Jungle Fowl

[Ntsees]

...Males are in eclipse, the combs are tiny and they are very dull compared to their usual vibrant color and pattern. Come spring, or maybe before (?) they will start showing signs of color again and I'll change their diets to a breeding diet.

Your birds should start regrowing their breeding colors within a month (they could already be starting). By the end of December, they should be in complete breeding plumage.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

I have a friend who raises Black Quechua/Olmec fowl  and they do not have a laughing crow.  Musical?  maybe but all roosters have their own voices.  I knew an old woman who raised Araucana's some 30+ years ago and she said some of hers had a laughing crow but at that time, breeders were only interested in the tufts and rumpless traits and the crow was lost.  Indonesia is banned to import from by every other country that I'm aware of.  Until they can get control of the disease in the birds there, no one will ever allow importation from them. Illegal importation might yield a few hatched chicks but they would likely not live long enough to crow or produce and could cause outbreaks here in the US, not to mention huge fines if you're caught.

Green Jungle Fowl are still very rare due to how fragile they are to raise.  There are not many breeders and many are opposed to hybridisation because the pure numbers are so low.  Even in Indonesia, the wild caught males used to make the Bekisars, often do not survive a full breeding season as they are so susceptible to common poultry diseases.  Green JF also are not likely to breed willingly with domestic hens so artificial insemination is how most Bekisars are made.  I have friends from Indonesia who breed them.   The chicks are fairly hardy (Bekisars) and the cockerels have all sorts of interesting crows but the hens are generally infertile, none known to be fertile.  Breeding a Bekisar male back to either a domestic hen or a pure Green JF hen can produce varying degrees of fertility in hens and full fertility in cockerels.   I've been studying this for Years.   I figure if there was a way to create a laughing crow line of birds here in the US, then those trying for the past 30 yrs would have gotten it done....maybe.   Still, it hasn't stopped breeders from trying.   I am no different.  I bought my first Jungle Fowl this year.  I'm hoping to do well producing pure JF (I have Murghi Murghi Reds, Greys, Sri Lanka and Greens)   Task number one is to keep them alive through the winter here, where it can be bitterly cold (Yes, they have a building that I can heat)  Next, to provide the right environment and change of diet to support breeding and fertile eggs.  Then to successfully brood and raise the chicks.   If I find I can raise plenty of these guys, I may give some cross breeding a try, with AI only, using a male I raise for this purpose so he can be handled and collected.   The other thing about JF, the Greens that is, they are mature and productive at age "4".......so keeping them alive until fully mature can be an expensive challenge.  

Then.....after all that, where does one go to build a laughing crow rooster????  It's all a crap shoot without a blueprint and I have asked many breeders of JF in Indonesia about the origins of the Laughing Crow and All I can get from them is that they are just like that, absolutely nothing as far as an idea about what breeds/species were used to make the first ones.  And, they don't breed true.......   And THIS is why there are no Laughing crow roosters anywhere else in the world but Indonesia,   LOL    Drives me nuts too.   

I finally found (last night) a YouTube video of an Quechua fowl crowing and yes, just a regular crow. I guess you can't believe everything that you read on the Internet. I also found some information under an Ayam Cemani thread about the diet and avoiding phytoestrogens. I had decided that I needed to start with a pair of greens and raise them in total isolation in a heated building and then raise a GJF male with some female Quechua chicks but I don't know if I could afford that specialty diet for an entire unproductive flock for 4 years. I was also wondering if even chicks hatched and brooded in clean conditions might still carry diseases that GJF are succeptable to (carried over inside the egg). It is starting to sound like a future project in retirement.

 

[BekisarBengal]

RobG7aChattTN,

Sounds like a very interesting project. Do you have a Green Jungle Fowl yet? I'll definitely be monitoring your progress. As you get further along toward your objective, I'd probably willing to purchase some of your fertile rejects that have unsuitable phenotypes relative to your goals.

Your rejects could help me with some endeavors that are in a totally different direction and it could help finance your operation; and if I came up with phenotypes you might be interested in, we could make swaps. This is indeed a large scale objective, but if you get some other people willing to participate in some way, it could be much more manageable.

 

[BekisarBengal]

Sorry for my negligence. I was reading the posts backward, as I couldn't remember how far along I'd read, and I forgot that you don't have a Green Jungle fowl yet. Probably getting one would be necessary and ideal. However, I think the other part of your strategy makes sense too. Those genes are absolutely out there in the Araucana, Ayam Cemani, Quetero, Ponape, Rapanui and a whole lot of others.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Sorry for my negligence.  I was reading the posts backward, as I couldn't remember how far along I'd read, and I forgot that you don't have a Green Jungle fowl yet.  Probably getting one would be necessary and ideal.  However, I think the other part of your strategy makes sense too.  Those genes are absolutely out there in the Araucana, Ayam Cemani, Quetero, Ponape, Rapanui and a whole lot of others.

I'm still in the "research phase". I've decided that I may as well build the cage first to make sure that I have separate, heated quarters far away from any of my current chickens that is completely inaccessible to any wild birds. I haven't decided yet whether it would be best to try and find adult birds or start with chicks but a lot of that might be determined by availability. The advantage of adult birds would be having fertile birds right away (apparently they take 4 years to reach maturity) and the advantage of starting with chicks is that you get birds that, while probably not exactly "tame" they hopefully at least do not panic when they are handled...which might be necessary if Artificial Insemination is the only way to keep them disease free. I'm not sure if freshly hatched chicks raised along side the Green Junglefowl would be "clean" enough or if merely hatching in an incubator that had hatched so many chicken eggs or any diseases that might be passed on through the egg might endanger the Junglefowl. I might be reading too much into things but there may be diseases carried by domestic chickens that they are totally immune to that might negatively affect the Junglefowl. On top of that, the idea of raising a small flock of poultry side by side for four years on a diet of mealworms, dubia roaches, nuts, berries, krill and seeds seems like a lot of wasted money. Besides, if I'm going to go to all that effort I may as well try to raise some pure Green Junglefowl. I did contact one seller that did not want to sell to someone who would be attempting to create hybrids. I wouldn't want to do that with Red Junglefowl but I don't see any chance that there would ever be the same problem with creating a bird that looked like almost pure Green Junglefowl but that was not pure. It seems that there are actually already quite a few Indonesian breeds that were derived using Bekisars but they have been bread for a lot of reasons other than trying to get them to look like Green Junglefowl. Instead it seems that most of the focus has been on their crow. Anyhow, it looks like creating a bunch of Bekisars (but with domestic chickens, not Red Junglefowl) shouldn't be all that difficult. Crossing those back to pure domestics should be fairly easy. Getting fertile females seems to be the hard part. If it doesn't happen in that generation then you have to keep at it over successive generations with lower percent Junglefowl males until you get fertile females. Hopefully a Bekisar doesn't take 4 years to reach sexual maturity. Then who knows how many generations of inbreeding and line breeding to see some Green Junglefowl traits (especially that comb). Honestly my biggest concern is my wife...let's say "not supporting" my efforts. I already don't have time to focus on building a proper enclosure because she has me building a barn this summer and various other projects.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

I can't seem to get the link to work but there is a thread here in backyardchickens called "The Blackest Ones" that is mostly about Ayam Cemani but has lots of great information and photos involving chicken breeds that have some Green Junglefowl in them. There is a breed called "Dragon Bone" (that might not actually be a translation of the name but might merely describe a chicken with black bones but not black flesh) and there is a picture of a rooster that looks a lot like some of the Bekisars that I've seen photos of.

 

[BekisarBengal]

I'm in the same boat. I'm no carpenter by any means and I work a little each day on cages. I'm a long way from being able to accommodate a Green JF.

Disease is a problem, and although my username may not suggest it, I respect these birds in their pure form immensely and want to preserve them. I also, however, respect the Indonesians who created unique hybrids in antiquity.

I too, like the Indonesians, am interested in the crow more than anything else (at least for this project). If I could get an Ayam Bekisar Hutan, Ayam Kokoketawa or an Ayam Ketawa Belengkek, I'd be done. It appears to me though, that it may be easier to make my own or team up with someone else like you than to ever find such birds in the US.

I've read "The Blackest Ones" post. That may be what I concentrate on, birds that have verified Bekisar and Ceylon hybrid ancestors.

Have you seen the YouTube videos of Ayam Cemani Bekisars? That's not a bad looking comb to start a breeding project that meets your objectives; and the GJF genes in the Cemani might not hurt either for back breeding.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

I'm actually pretty handy but I've always got several projects going and I've got young kids as well. If I get my project going I'm sure to have a ton of extra Bekisar-type roosters that will need new homes. If I can get a GJF rooster that is fairly tame for me and if I start Artificial Insemination then getting some F1 males should be the least of my worries. I'll probably try Ayam Cemani, Quechua, Sumatra, Araucana and just about any other hens that I can get my hands on. I'd really like to have a variety of hens because then the non-GJF traits would hopefully be less pronounced in the F2 generation. Plus, at some point there would be some brother/sister matings and ideally the birds would have different mothers or at least have a broad genetic background.

 

[BekisarBengal]

Yeah, me too. I've got six kids, but only two still at home. Life does get in the way.

You get that Green JF, and I've got those other birds, except the Quechua, but I Just heard my Tomaru crow, so I have those kind of genes here. I'm serious about working together in the future.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Yeah, me too.  I've got six kids, but only two still at home.  Life does get in the way.

You get that Green JF, and I've got those other birds, except the Quechua, but I Just heard my Tomaru crow, so I have those kind of genes here.  I'm serious about working together in the future.

Sounds good to me! I have access to all of those birds as well...except the Quechua. Of course...at a price. I need to contact the guy that I know with the Ayam Cemani and see if he ever gets chicks with bad coloring that he'd sell cheap. Re-reading that thread the "Dragon Bone" is the form that any of the fibromelanistic breeds will revert to if they are free ranged and allowed to pick their own mates. They end up with a lot of GJF characteristics. I couldn't get the link to work but this is from that thread: