Chickenosauurs_RexNo54
Songster
Oh, that does seem likely.I do. Or to put in another way, I think there was likely a landrace of red junglefowl hybrids (or RJF-like gamefowl) common across the American south since the Spanish colonial period. I think at different times they tracked more RJF/Spanish gamefowl-like or more Old English/American gamefowl-like depending on which specific location and historical period one is considering, but the overall effect was that there was a constant presence of these RJF-like birds for a long time around the Gulf Coast and the Florida peninsula, and this selection of genetics is responsible for many different breeds or bloodlines of what we could consider to be bankivoid gamefowl today that come out of the South. I think Frank Gary’s American game bantam is influenced by this stock, as are many American games commonly held out to be Blueface and old McLean or Hatch lines.
I don’t necessarily hold that these birds have high percentage of recent RJF blood. I consider it likely that the last RJF influence was from the Spanish Empire and since then the birds mostly became genetically domestic with physical RFJ traits remaining simply because they aided in free range survival on rural farms and around colonial towns, Or even that the RJF appearance is entirely a genetic throwback due to their semi-feral lifestyles, as sort of reversion to an earlier form in the same way that free range domestic hogs, when combined with some wild boar influence, now often have a wild boar look to them even though actual European or Russian wild boar may only be a small percentage of their background.
So if there ever was a popular Red Junglefowl bantam kept in the US, I bet it was of this sort of stock and not actual pure RJF bred down to bantam sized. Something that looked a lot like a RJF but may not have had RJF bred in since the 1500s-1700s.
