Top 12 Utterly Bizarre Chicken Breeds
Have a look at some strangely cool chicken breeds, like this Polish chicken.
Crazy-Looking Chickens
A chicken is a chicken is a chicken, right? I mean, they all taste like chicken. Aside from their propensity for crossing roads, no one really thinks much about them, or do they? Below I have listed some of the most unique chicken breeds created by enthusiasts.
12 Interesting, Rare Chicken Breeds
- Onagadori
- Polish
- La Fleche
- Silkie Bantams
- Rumpless
- Scots Dumpy
- Modern Game Bantams
- Seramas
- Cream Legbar
- Colorful Egg Breeds
- Buttercup
- Naked Chickens
Related: Tips to Keep Your Backyard Chickens From Becoming Obese
A black-breasted gold Onagadori cock
1. Onagadori
Sometimes, being fortunate enough to be born, or hatched, into the upper classes can mean you're not just better off but fancy. Just like with dog breeds, royalty around the world have kept their own favorite chicken breeds that are too high maintenance for most of us to want to bother with. Take, for example, the Onagadori.
This spectacular bird was bred to decorate the Imperial Garden of Japan. They look more or less like every other chicken, except the roosters sport fantastically long tails that take years to grow and can exceed 20 feet in length! Of course, this comes at a cost. Since chickens are not accustomed to such flamboyant plumage, they actually take a lot of extra care to maintain.
Only the most pampered of roosters can keep the feathers of their tail from breaking and keep growing their beautiful train—not to mention that they drag on the ground and need to be kept extra clean as well. They are indeed a spectacle to behold, but perhaps that's where they should stay. Onagadori probably aren't going to find too many people willing to primp them for their own vanity.
Related: 4 Dog Breeds That Will Probably Kill Your Chickens
Polish chickens
2. Polish
Polish chickens aren't actually from Poland. They're a very old breed, mostly bred these days as show birds or to add a little flair to a flock. They come in an assortment of colors and are always having a 1980s sort of hair day.
They have an extra piece of bone that creates a dome on the top of their skull, pushing their head feathers outward. This gives the hens a lovely bouffant and the roosters a crazy swoosh of rock-and-roll hair.
They are a lively egg-laying breed that is sadly also kept as "hawk bait" by some to protect more expensive chickens. They make for particularly easy targets for predators because their crest often obscures their vision, making them slow to respond to a threat—basically, the fainting goat of the chicken world.
But that's not to say they aren't also adored by a great number of enthusiasts just for their beauty, their plucky personality, or their delicious eggs!
A La Fleche rooster
3. La Fleche
There's nothing quite like a satanic-looking chicken with a crazy name to match. La Fleche chickens were originally bred in France for the dual purpose of providing meat and eggs, but that doesn't explain why they're most often jet-black birds with what appear to be fleshy little devil horns.
La Fleche do poorly in confinement, and the French pride themselves on their free-ranging chickens. This means these birds are aloof around people. Far from following their owners to hang around, these interesting little fowl like to secret themselves away in obscure corners of the property. I think they're plotting, but that's just my theory.
4. Silkie Bantams
Silkie Bantams are a very weird breed indeed. They hail from Asia, and although they might look like dust bunnies, they're actually chickens that maintain their chick-like down feathers their entire life. Even their little legs are hairy. At the end of each leg, they have not four but five toes.
In the U.S., they're mainly kept as pets because they're tiny and adorable, but they're also great "broodies" (hatching the eggs of other chickens who want nothing to do with motherhood) and lay a fair amount of tiny eggs on their own. In Asia, they're considered a delicacy because they have black skin, meat, and bones.
Their blue-black meat has been shown to have different nutritional properties than regular chickens; in particular, it has higher carnosine content. However, in the U.S., they have been crossbred extensively with other breeds, and only some strains retain black skin and bones.
Related: How Can I Tell if My Bird's Eggs Are Going to Hatch?
Rumpless chicken
5. Rumpless
Ever look at a Manx cat and think, "Gee, I wonder what a chicken would look like with that gene?" Here is your chance to find out! Rumpless chickens exist almost wholly within the Araucana breed.
When they hatch, they are short of a few vertebrae, in particular the ones that would normally hold up tail feathers, so they end up looking more like a dodo bird than a chicken. And since they hail from Araucanas, they lay blue eggs.
Scots Dumpy
6. Scots Dumpy
Never has there been a more tragically titled chicken than the Scots Dumpy. Is there some reason their name is so unflattering? Well, Scots Dumpies have been around for hundreds of years. They're achondroplasic chickens, which means that they're dwarfed.
Although their bodies are the same as most large fowl, sometimes exceeding 7 pounds in weight, they only stand 2 inches off the ground. Of course, being such an ancient breed, they have lots of names: creepers, crawlies, and stumpies.
Their meat is considered more succulent because, with short legs, they can't get as much exercise, which makes them more tender for the table and easier to catch! They are a breed going extinct because 25% of the pure Dumpy eggs (those that receive two copies of the dwarfing gene) will die before hatching.
Modern Game bantam
7. Modern Game Bantams
Legs, legs, legs—that's what Modern Games have the most of. In fact, when paired with a Scots Dumpy, you can almost hear the faint sound of laughter.
About 100 years ago, these birds were bred for cockfighting, but that wasn't to last, as cockfighting became illegal in England, their home country. They continued to be very popular in the U.S. for fighting until Louisiana became the last state to ban cockfighting in 2007.
As of 2019, it is also federally illegal in all U.S. territories. By that time, these birds had endeared themselves not just to the seedy world of cockfighting but also to show breeders and pet owners. It's at this point that they started to be bred to be smaller, less aggressive, and come in every color under the sun. They are said to be especially personable and continue to be a very common show bird.
Juvenile frizzle (curly-feathered) hen
8. Seramas
Seramas are the teacup puppies of the chicken world. They're sweet, lovable, and come in a wild assortment of colors, feather patterns, and feather types. They're one of the few breeds that allow frizzles (curly feathers) and silkied (down feathers) onto the show table. Not allowed on the show table (but still in existence) are also booted varieties with feathered feet.
Serama chickens come in over 2,500 different colors and are so loved in their native Malaysia that Serama-only beauty pageants are a huge deal there. Because they are only the size of a pigeon, these tiny wonders make for great house pets both in Malaysia and abroad. They are the world's smallest breed of chicken and have been flaunting their stuff in the United States since they were first imported in 2001.
9. Cream Legbar
For many years, breeders of egg-laying breeds have struggled with the issue of having too many roosters. In the old days, roosters would be raised and eaten. Today, there are not that many people who like to eat adult roosters, which have the rubbery consistency of shoe leather.
Besides, raising roosters comes at a cost. If you intend to raise the roosters for meat, you still have to feed them for several months before you can figure out which ones are hens and which ones are roosters.
That's where Cream Legbars came onto the scene. They were created as a blue egg-laying breed that had one very special trait: the ability to sort at hatching. As you can see by the photo, the females have "chipmunk stripes," and the males are a lighter, more solid color.
Now, extra rooster chicks could be immediately slaughtered or made into pet food, and the only ones left would be the future egg layers. This has made them very popular in many homesteads. In the U.S., some strains lay blue eggs, while others lay green, and sometimes a white one is hatched.