An excerpt from Backyard Poultry Magazine:
Traditional American Poultry
By Craig Russell
Traditional poultry keeping and traditional poultry are little remembered in modern North America. Books written for the small flock owner during the past 50 years have been little more than scaled-down versions of commercial programs. If you want poultry in your back yard, consider an old time breed, kept the old fashioned way.
Colonial flocks are often described as undistinguished mongrels, dismissed as Dung Hill chickens. It's an unfair characterization that was asserted by self-styled experts, often academics and government officials, in the latter 19th century. Their contention that most early chickens were simply dung hill mongrels was considered laughable by the Old Timers.
This group of Dominiques owned by Adria Weatherbee are very true to the traditional breed. They have the flatter, more cushion-like combs, unlike the more modern ones with whose combs are more prominent and spikier. The rooster is also the correct stockier build. Photo courtesy of Adria Weatherbee.
Games were very common as utility fowl in the early days. Dung Hill was a term that Cockers, cock fighters, used to describe chickens that were not Games. It did not necessarily imply a mixed origin.
Promotion of recently created breeds in which the writers had an economic interest played a role in the way breeds were portrayed after the 1870s. According to the old time poultrymen, the literary changes preceded any actual changes in the habits of typical poultry keepers.
Post Civil War Poultry
Prior to the Civil War and in the years directly following it, poultry books proclaimed Dominiques, Dorkings and Games as popular breeds. Dorkings and Games were generally considered the best table fowl and were used to produce an early market cross. Dorkings were crossed with Brahmas to produce another popular market hybrid. But by the late 1800s, writers were claiming Dominiques were too small, Dorkings were not popular, Games were tough, and that Americans preferred chickens with yellow skin.
Nevertheless, Games, Dominiques and Dorkings, in that order, remained the most common chickens on diversified farms and with small flock owners in many rural areas. In and around towns, folks who wanted to have something different from their neighbors had a little bit of everything.
Rocks and Leghorns were the dominant commercial breeds by the late 1800s. Hamburgs, Polish and Spanish had dominated egg production from the 18th century until the late 19th century, when Leghorns became the dominant commercial egg breed. On the meat side, commercial poultry operations had gone to Rocks, with Wyandottes playing an important secondary role. Around major Eastern cities some large operations retained Black chickens, the Javas and their descendants, the Giants. Others raised Dorkings for British and French immigrants who wanted a five-toed, white-skinned fowl.
