We're here today to talk about an aspect of raising poultry that's a little
different than just raising a few for the backyard. There's quite a number of people
who raise chickens like this for show, and it's called exhibition poultry.
And there's a, believe it or not, over 400 varieties and 60 breeds of poultry that
are recognized just in the United States alone. But before we start talking about
these birds here, what I'd like to do is show you a little bit about how you can
tell the difference between a cock and a hen as far as chickens go.
The first thing that is very apparent is this area right here, this fleshy part, is
called a comb, and we have the wattles right beneath the beak, and on this male,
this is actually a cock, white plymouth rock, and you can see that this part of
his comb is very large, and he just has a masculine looking face. That's one way
you can tell a Rooster other than of course the Roosters will crow.
But as far as feathering goes, you can see a difference in the areas on the body that
show a difference between a cock and a hen for instance, these are called hackle
feathers, and you can see that they're very long, and rather stiff.
When we look at the hen in just a minute you'll see that those hackle feathers
aren't that long and stiff.
And then in the back, along the back here these are called saddle hackles. And in
males they have a tendency to be a lot longer and flowing than in the female also
And, so one characteristic on the legs is the spurs, and sometimes females will have
spurs but generally they don't. There are some breeds that do have them but
basically these are found on the male. And they're just a bony structure that
comes right off the shank, the bone of the leg here, and that distinguishes them
basically from most females.
Now what I'd like to do is show you the hen from the same variety.
She got a little dirty there in the cage but you can see that the head looks
a lot more refined than the male does. The comb is generally smaller, wattles are
smaller, and you can see that those hackle feathers are much rounder and softer.
And she doesn't have the saddle hackles as does the male.
Generally the tail has the tendency to be a little less long and flowing than the
male does also, and you can notice that on her feet,
there's no spurs. There's kind of the remnant of where it would be.
In this particular set of birds here we have two different breeds.
And we have three varieties of one breed.
The main breed here is the Plymouth Rock,
and varieties in each breed usually are differentiated by different color patterns
in the feathers, and we had just looked at the white Plymouth Rock, This pair
right here is called the Columbian Plymouth Rock. You can see obviously
from the differences there that this particular feather pattern is basically
the same in the male and the female.
I think if we pull this guy out,
we can see a little bit more of some of those characteristics we were talking
about on the hackles.
And notice how much thinner and longer they are.
And these saddle hackles are just beautiful that flow down here
and these tail feathers have a sheen to them, and these long tail feathers on the
male are called the sickle feathers.
And again the same characteristics generally apply to all these birds we're
looking at today.
Female, male, basically the same color pattern there. In the white, a similar
color pattern.
Down here in the third spot, we have a pair of Plymouth Rocks and they are called
Barred Plymouth Rocks because of their feather pattern making them look like they
got bars on them.
This is an interesting variety of Plymouth Rock because the male and the female,
even though superficially they look like they've got the same color pattern,
there's genetics involved that makes it so the male has twice the width of the
white on him than the female does.
Hence, he looks a little bit lighter to look at.
While we're on the wing lets talk a little bit about some wing feathers.
These are, these outer ones where my thumb is right now are called primaries,
and they're the primary flight feathers. And the short little feather right in
between here, that looks like one is broken right there, is called the
axial feather.
Right there, and then after that you have your secondaries that form the rest of
the wing.
Then you have your other feathers that cover up that way. So here we have a
Bar Plymouth Rock male. I'll show you the female just for comparison.
Notice the overall darker appearance of the female, because of that genetic fact
of the barring but you can definitely see the barring in the color pattern. It's
very beautiful color of bird.
Now lets go on to another breed of Banham Chicken these are all Banhams by the way
that means they're a special dwarf type of chicken that's about one quarter to
one fifth the size of the large fowl counter part if they do have one.
Now at this end we have the Old English Game and in this pen we have an example of
a feather pattern that is showing some sexual dimorphism in other words the male
and females don't look the same in the adult, and you can see that the male has
obviously a black breast and some white feathers.
This is called a silver duckwing pattern.
A little more flighty than the Plymouth Rock, but you can see some of the pattern
in the wings. I think the duckwing basically comes by this real iridescent
wingbow that they have on there.
You can see that the hackle feathers in this case are a cream color. They're the
same shape as what we've looked at before, and he's got prominent sickle feathers
these ones that come out in the back and then his spurs are very prominent
characteristic too.
In some varieties, including this one, the female is very different than the male.
Look at the difference in the color pattern in the female. It's got stipled
feathers, there's not that dark, black, and cream color involved in it.
Hackles look much different and it has a
salmon colored breast. And of course the tail on the female is not quite as
prominent and large as it is on the male.
We have a flat of Banham eggs here. Generally, Banham eggs are going to be
smaller than a normal chicken egg too, they're probably about pee-wee sized
as far as egg-grading goes, but they're very good to eat, just as good to eat as
any other egg.
Most Banhams have the tendency to lay eggs that are a little bit cream colored, but
they vary from white to dark brown depending on the particular strain of
chicken that's laying these eggs.
People who raise these types of birds will take them to shows where there's hundreds
of birds competing in the shows for different prizes and each of these
varieties and each of these breeds are judged on particular characteristics that
are found basically in the "standard of perfection" is what it's called it's the
American Poultry Association judging book and that's what all these birds are
judged on. And so you can see it's a very complicated situation to be able to judge
and know what all these chickens are supposed to look like, they have different
shank colors, different beak colors, different earlobe colors, as well as their
plumage, and so this is really important to a lot of folks that some of the people
that just raise chickens in the backyard don't really see this type of bird, but
there's some pretty high-bred expensive chickens that people show.