A Passion for Rare Poultry Antiquities

[Resolution]

mmaddie's mom :

Thanks for all the great information!

ETA... just curious... where are you located (in general) ?

I live in New England and New York most of the year.

Where do you live?​

 

[mmaddie's mom]

I also really like the lavender birds... are they the Lavendar UK Araucana or another older breed?

I'm in Central Illinois... all the time!

 

[Lbrad7]

Beautiful and interesting birds! Thanks for sharing the pics.

 

[Resolution]

mmaddie's mom :

I also really like the lavender birds... are they the Lavendar UK Araucana or another older breed?

I'm in Central Illinois... all the time!

Illinois. Are you in farming country?
To answer your question, the photographed lavender birds are United Kingdom Araucanians.
The U.K Araucanians' recent ancestors were carried from the Falkland Isles to Europe during the 18oo's.

When I mention names like Shehuen or Huastec; Ona or Mapuche I'm providing names of regions where domestic chickens were reported to have come with respective features. The creatures had been living in Indian villages at the coldest reaches of South America for so long, the coldest weather morphotype breeds were covered in insulator plumage very different from what we might expect of their subtropical Junglefowl ancestors. Each specific type was carried with specific peoples and like the Western "Araucana", these words and terms were only applied as a means to easily define or identify a specific subset of the overall population of every South American Indian poultry race or subbreed.

The U.K. Araucana and to a great extent the Ameraucana are the closest facsimile of a more or less unadulterated stage of development within the "Quechua" race.
The Shehuen is intermediate between Quechua and Mapuche with some of the specimen skins resembling rather closely certain obscure Oceania races;

Oceania and the Pacific being the route by which seafarers carried domestic fowl to South America before Europeans arrived in South America.

They represent, to some extent, at least functionally,a snapshot in time- that gene pool of South American Indian Chicken from whatever region the Indian laborers that carried their fowl to the Falklands-to the great ports and cities of coastal South America closest to the then European Colony Industry that was the Falklands-
These Indians came from different regions- many from Shehuen- many from as far north as the Mosquito Coast - the shift in industry- would encourage them to migrate and when its productivity declined the working class poor were again obliged to migrate- carrying their children and clothes, their seeds and dogs - and their chickens- - to new ports-

The UK Araucanian hen and the Ameraucana represent snapshots in time- their founder genes include those of once closed genetic pools of unique domestic fowl endemic to the region. They have been maintained in more or less naturalistic selection ever since. Lots of Eurasian domestic chicken genes have flooded the old; nevertheless, those treasured genes still remain undiluted at the core.

Getting back to cold weather insulation. It does seem odd that a domestic animal derived of such a subtropical ancestor as the Junglefowl would even be able to exist in these cold regions to begin with especially given the fact that the stage of their domestication was only in its most preliminary phases when the seafarers carried them to the coasts of South America.

From molecular and osteological data, we know that the junglefowl ancestor of all chickens (including the winterized Araucanian hens-) was very closely related to the African Francolin and the Asiatic bamboofowl. On another major branching, and derived from the same root as the francolin/junglefowl/bamboofowl, is the Alectoris Rock Partridge and the snowcock.

Without exception all these taxa exhibit densely feathered faces. Based on the fossil record, the Junglefowl African Francolin clade had an extensive range that included most of Europe to the Balkans. When the ice ages transformed that landscape into ice locked phases of the Palearctic zone- -these fowl expanded their ranges into Africa- where for all we know their ancestor came from before it showed up in Europe- it was a very different world then.

The majority of the relatives of the Junglefowl are actually adapted for life in very different biota -different habitat- consequently, when we see the cold weather adapted chicken with its oddly defined characteristics-the remarkable degree of specialization of ocular rffs and subauricle muffs- the gular muff- these shouldn't surprise us because the phylogeny on the whole appears to be highly adaptive- plastic one might say- this has served this group's successful radiations into new habitats.

Jungle Bush Quail

Here's a creature older than all others in this monophyletic lineage ( that of the Junglefowl/Francolin/Bamboo Partridge/ Chukar/ Pharaoh Quail)
Like contemporary Coturnix Quail - we can envision some members of the ancestral assemblage at the root of the modern lineages named above- we can envision that their common ancestor may have been somewhat migratory- perhaps certain populations became migratory- decreased in size and moved further afield to survive in a rapidly shifting environment?

Once those migratory populations immigrated into habitat that was less challenging to survive, find food and reproduce in -they began to grow in exponentially in size.

The African Francolins may represent a second colonization of Eurasian Fauna that took place during the Pliocene.

It may well be that the Junglefowl we know today- its living in ecosystems that havent changed much for eons- and as such they haven't changed much during all this time- the Green Junglefowl may represent a dinosaur amongst chickens- and from it evolved the Ceylon from the Ceylon derived the Grey- the Red JF is basically what's happening when these two major junglefowl clades converged during the Pleistocene.


Getting back to the original domestic chickens of South America:

They are just chickens after all but their morphological developments may resemble populations of extinct fossil forms that lived in similar habitats.

Just as every elephant carries a bit of woolly mammoth or mastadon in it...

- we know their closest ancestor, indeed their family branch grows from the trunk of the African Francolins.

A small, partridge shaped version of a chicken make sense in a matter of speaking because of the challenges nature puts it through.

A better analogy might be the stone fruit -orchard specialists know that cherries, plums and peaches are are all closely related.
Cherries have gone into plums and plums into peaches- the best attributes are borrowed from one and selectively bred on top of what ever birds arrive in​

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Hey Resolution, cool info and cool birds, thanks for sharing!

 

[Lollipop]

Hello Resolution,
From the pics and info you have posted, it seems to me that you might be interrested in preserving some, if not all, of the fowl you possess. To seek out like minded people, I suggest you contact the SPPA at http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/SPPA/SPPA.html. These folks are some of the finest breeders of poultry antiquities that you will find........Pop

 

[theoldchick]

A fascinating read.

 

[mmaddie's mom]

This thread is like going on an on-line chicken history class!

 

[laughaha]

This is really great!!!! Please keep sharing your knowledge and beautiful pics!! TYTY for what you have shared!!

 

[ivan3]

Always interesting, thank you!

Another thread by this maven with even more info and great pics: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=140469&p=1