Here's part of an e-mail I received from David Scrivener:
~~First I suggest you buy (
eBay or
Amazon you can read sample pages on
Amazon) or borrow a copy of my books 'Rare Poultry Breeds' and 'Popular Poultry Breeds' for comprehensive history of chicken breeds info. I could sell you copies, but postage UK>US would probably be high, so perhaps best to buy them in US.
Most Medieval chickens would have been quite small (but not bantams) as they had to forage for their own food (peasants couldn't spare wheat/barley/oats for chicken feed) and escape predators. I'm not sure which of the current breeds which would most closely represent them now are available in the US. Most I'm thinking of are very much still European only, such as Ardenner, Drentse, Friesian, Groningers and Thuringians. Perhaps in the US the smaller strains of fighting Pit Game would be your nearest available. For your keeping and public display purposes, it might be best to cross Pit Game with something a bit more docile, some of the larger bantam breeds perhaps, such as Plymouth Rocks or Sussex.
Domestic ducks were medium size, bigger than wild ducks, but smaller than the heavy breeds are today or have been for the past century. Mostly in plumage colours like wild mallards, or variations, such as the dilute patterns of Abacot Rangers or Silver Appleyards.
As for pens, they didn't generally have any. Country people often lived in 'medieval long houses' (Google it), where people lived with their livestock. This got even more squalid with ducks, as was found in England about 1870, when Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire (centre of the duck industry supplying London markets) appointed its first public health inspector. I guess you remember some of the squalid scenes in TV news from the far east when bird flu first became a major scare. It was the same in parts of Europe until only 150 years ago. Aylesbury public library published a book about their local duck breed history years ago - I don't know if they still stock it.
Also Google 'poultry higgler crate' for the transport crates which poorer dealers carried birds to markets on their back, walking miles to sell a few birds. Chicken and ducks were luxury food items. Of course, better off higglers would have had a horse & cart. One of my ancestors was one of them in the early 19th century. He lived at Amersham, a town halfway between London (the size London was then - Amersham is virtually a London suburb now) and Aylesbury. Each cart load of ducks was a two day operation, day one up to Aylesbury to buy them, day two down to London to sell them.
There were some specialist table chicken producers, mostly in rural areas near big cities. In England, in the counties of Kent, Sussex and Surrey to the south of London. I guess you know something of the history of the Dorking breed, although I made it a lot clearer in Popular Poultry Breeds. These table birds were surgically castrated, 'caponised', and force fed while being housed in wooden cages. So much for the 'good old days'!
David also referred me to
http://www.chickenco-op.net/home where he is assisting some of the grad students with their research.
