What’s the rarest breed of chicken

[Florida Bullfrog]

The original Frank Gary lines of American game bantam are likely extinct. Even reproductions of American game bantams are rare, hardly appearing at shows.

There is a red junglefowl bantam recognized by the American Bantam Association that is listed in the SOP as likely extinct.

 

[Amer]

The original Frank Gary lines of American game bantam are likely extinct. Even reproductions of American game bantams are rare, hardly appearing at shows.

There is a red junglefowl bantam recognized by the American Bantam Association that is listed in the SOP as likely extinct.

Was the red jungle fowl bantam ever existant in the first place, though?

 

[Amer]

I would say that the rarest APA recognized breed would be between the Holland, Lamona, La Flèche, or the Dutch bantam.

At the Ohio National they had a Dutch Bantam meet with a lot of birds, but they pulled their birds early on Sunday Morning so I didn’t get to see them! Except one.
I did see a couple Catalanas for the first time though!
Still have yet to see a Redcap, though.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

At the Ohio National they had a Dutch Bantam meet with a lot of birds, but they pulled their birds early on Sunday Morning so I didn’t get to see them!
I did see a couple Catalanas for the first time though!
Still have yet to see a Redcap, though.

Wait. There's bantam redcaps?

 

[Amer]

Wait. There's bantam redcaps?

No

 

[JacinLarkwell]

No

Oh, dang. I got real excited for a moment. Must have just read wrong

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Was the red jungle fowl bantam ever existant in the first place, though?

Apparently it was. I couldn’t imagine that a standard of perfection would exist for a breed that never existed.

There is indirect evidence in literature that suggest that red jungle fowl hybrids were common in the American south in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Frank Gary created the American game bantam by breeding a “red jungle fowl” he received from a farm in South Carolina in the early 1900s. Whatever these RJF were that were supposedly common in that era probably relates to the recognition of a RJF bantam from that time.

 

[cubalaya]

black cubalayas

 

[Chickenosauurs_RexNo54]

Apparently it was. I couldn’t imagine that a standard of perfection would exist for a breed that never existed.

There is indirect evidence in literature that suggest that red jungle fowl hybrids were common in the American south in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Frank Gary created the American game bantam by breeding a “red jungle fowl” he received from a farm in South Carolina in the early 1900s. Whatever these RJF were that were supposedly common in that era probably relates to the recognition of a RJF bantam from that time.

DO you think that Florida cracker fowl could be relate or descendants of the RJ bantam?

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

DO you think that Florida cracker fowl could be relate or descendants of the RJ bantam?

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.