Red Jungle Fowl: Ancestor of the domestic chicken
As
we start thinking outside the box when it comes to chicken care, it
helps to look at what chickens really are. Most folks believe
that chickens were domesticated from the Red Jungle Fowl which
currently lives in southeast Asia.
Red Jungle Fowl roosters look just like Rhode Island Reds to my
untrained eye but the hen is far less conspicuous. They act a lot
like domesticated chickens too, dust-bathing, crowing, and so
forth. One point of interest is that these are not birds of open
meadows --- Red Jungle Fowl seem to prefer bamboo forests for their
territories. That could explain why shade is such an essential
ingredient in a chicken yard on a hot summer day.
| This post is part of our Chicken Trivia lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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