Developed around Decorah, Iowa, around the first half of the twentieth century, the story is that a white leghorn went broody under a building and when she came out she had a clutch of chicks that looked like no others anyone had seen before, the old timers say the sir was a pheasant,the breed almost died out, a man named Ken Whealy of the Decorah-based non profit Seed Savers Exchange found a few straggleing flocks and preserving the breed and started seeding out some in the late 1980s, says they are good foragers, good layer of brown eggs, and good mothers when crossed with a White rock hen you will get sexlinked greyish cockrels and black pullets, when crossed with a NHR hen you get reddish gray cockrels and blackish grey pullets, they are listed as a rare breed but not recognised by the APA, well thats the sum of it, Lynn