It is my understanding that the Red Jungle Fowl is the grandaddy of domestic fowl, and that it war a bantam sized bird. If that is the case, would it not so that true bantams were bred first and the large fowl were bred up in size purely by selection. Do all bantams carry the dwarfing gene? (NOTE): Infomaniac, thanks for that web site. I am sure it will be a great aid to me.
You're welcome, Robb! I hope it is useful. If you have comments / ideas to make it more useful, please let me know. At one time, I wanted to have a library of photographs for illustrations. But, I wasn't successful in collecting pictures from fanciers. I could revive that effort, but I would need a lot of help from the fancy to get good examples. On the other hand, Barry at the FeatherSite has done a really good job of building a photo-encyclopedia of chickens, and the FeatherSite is included in the links page of the genetics pages.
P.S. The issue of True Bantams versus Miniature Birds ...
With respect to breeding-up birds from bantam size, wouldn't it be fun to breed a giant robin or giant pigeons! It might be hard at first to get the initial mutations for larger and larger body size... I don't know. But, it would be fun! A giant robin (the size of a standard chicken) would lay a really pretty blue egg!
Do you know the Wood Pigeon of Britain and Northern Europe? Very large. There are other larger pigeons in the wild in Africa and Eastern Europe. As far as larger Robins? Natural selection has not produced any so far. And as for the beautiful blue egg. The American Robin clutch size is 4-5 sky-blue eggs, twice or three times a year--not very useful! The wild bird branch of Avians we know as "song birds" is a different one from other branches from the main stem of feathered creatures, as is "water fowl" or "sea birds", "raptors", etc.and, of courses "poultry", as we know our chickens now. Normally the various branches do not cross-breed, but breeding within each branch, while rare in some--in the wild, is easily done by us, when we have them captive. Mind boggling at times, I will just work with the one breed, several varieties, and learn all I can about THEM--and study does take one back to other varieties as just the phenotype, "Wild type" or"Partridge" (not as in Wyandottes) can have several dozen other gene combinations hidden, which can be brought forth by adding the double dose, dominant or recessives, to their glory! CJR
Thank you for your post, CJR. I'm not sure what your point is.... Wild chickens before domestication probably didn't lay year-round either. And they were small... about the size of robins or slightly larger. Most of the desirable traits came into existance via human intervention.
Info, you are so right about corn, A most un-natural crop and feed. I know of no other crop that is as destructive of the land. Pour down 300lbs. of salts(fertilizer), inject liquid nitrogen,spray several times to kill everything but the corn, dont forget to kill all bugs(good and bad),compact the soil with 275hp. tractors then watch the wind and water erode a couple tons of top soil each year. After all is done, hope you have enough equity to borrow enough money to hold out 1 more year WOW. The problem is I love to grow the damn stuff. i grow open pollinated Bloody Butcher, a beautiful dark red, and Reids yellow dent.
Thank you for your post, Robb. We have raised our own organic (and very weedy!) corn... I like to use the chicken litter in the garden. It makes it seem like cleaning out the chicken house is yet another type of harvest. We don't compost, sometimes we spread it thinly and till it in but most of the time we put it on top of the soil where the rain will leach the manure into the soil and the hay will help reduce weeds. Chicken manure and Miracle Grow have the same nitrogen source (urea and salts of uric acid).
By Infomaniac on Friday, January 18, 2002 - 10:27 am:
I believe the earliest "chickens" (birds most resembling modern chickens) were bantam size birds and that the heavy breeds were obtained through selection for greater body weight. Whether or not that "earliest chicken" had a gene that could be called a dwarfing gene ... I believe that would be hard to know. I think of the dwarfing gene as being a gene that takes a large breed bird backward towards bantam size. So, I tend to think of the dwarfing gene as a mutation that occurred later than the earliest chicken. Certainly, people who have bred bantams from larger fowl have exploited the dwarfing gene(s).
But, on this point, I defer to others who are more knowledgable about the evolution of poultry. Rokimoto would be a more reliable source of information than I. R.D. Crawford has written a lot about the development and evolution of poultry. I'll look and see if he comments on this point.
By Infomaniac on Friday, January 18, 2002 - 10:46 am:
I made a lot of people angry by expressing my opinion that this issue is an illusion. My intention is not to make more people angry, but to make the point that True Bantams and Miniatures can be converted back and forth .... I can make True Bantams into Miniatures and Miniatures into True Bantams ... the issue is an illusion, in my arrogant opinion (I'm not really arrogant, I'm poking fun at false humility).
According to the definition of True Bantams that I find in G. Damerow's books (G. Damerow, "A Guide to Raising Chickens", Storey Books, 1995, pages 15 and 16), a True Bantam is a bird of small stature for which there does not exist a large fowl counterpart. A Miniature is a bird of small stature for which there IS a large fowl counterpart.
Now.... to convert a Miniature into a True Bantam ... just collect all the large fowl versions of the Miniature and kill them. Now, the Miniature fits the definition of a True Bantam. The Miniature is now a True Bantam. To convert the True Bantam into a Miniature, just develop a large fowl counterpart. (This is not hard to do.) Now, the True Bantam is demoted to the status of a Miniature.
Miniature becomes True Bantam becomes Miniature ...
Now, the diehards are going to try to revise the definition of True Bantam in order to clink to their sense of superiority in having "True Bantams"... they'll argue that "True Bantams" are birds that were developed or evolved BEFORE the large breeds. This is so bogus because there are no chickens, not even bantams, that don't have genes from large fowl. So, you can't say, without telling lies, that the bantam in your hand was "developed" before any large fowl. It simply wasn't.
These are the reasons that I believe the "True Bantam" vs. "Miniature Chicken" is a nonsensical issue.
Again, I am not trying to anger anyone. This is my opinion, and I have a right to it, and I have a right to express it.
By Infomaniac on Friday, January 18, 2002 - 11:01 am:
When I was a kid, the men in the family went "dove" hunting every so often. And we cooked them and they were supper! A dove to me is just a kind of pigeon! There's not much to eat there but breast meat. Then we had a bird we called "meadow larks". They have a yellow breast ... a truely lovely bird. We ate them too! LOL!
By Cjeanr on Friday, January 18, 2002 - 01:29 pm:
By Infomaniac on Friday, January 18, 2002 - 02:00 pm:
The monstrosity known as corn, would not survive in the wild as we know it. It is completely a product of human intervention, developed initially by American Indians.
By Robbpa on Friday, January 18, 2002 - 08:58 pm:
By Infomaniac on Friday, January 18, 2002 - 11:25 pm: