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Cochin Chickens arrived in England from China in the 19th century and have been a sensation ever since. Their soft, fluffy feathers, covering them down to the feet and beyond, are irresistible.
Cochin chickens are one of only three chicken breeds in the American Poultry Association’s Asiatic class. Reliable Poultry Journal, a publication that flourished through the 1920s, describes them in the publication The Asiatics: Brahmas, Cochins and Langshans. “Their origin is veiled in mystery, but from data gathered by numerous early fanciers, the period of their first appearance is fixed.”
Associate editor A.F. Hunter recorded the Cochin breed history, which was then within living recall. The birds were imported from Cochin China in 1843. In the 19th century, that wasn’t Mainland China, but a French colony in what we now know as the south of Vietnam. Those birds were presented to Queen Victoria. Lewis Wright, in his Illustrated Book of Poultry (1890), noted how different those birds were from the round, chubby Cochin Chickens of 50 years later. The Victoria Cochins are tall and rangy, like Malays. The drawing, by Samuel Read, is posted on my blog.
In 1847, four years after Queen Victoria received those original ‘Cochins,’ Shanghai birds were imported to England. Wrightpointed to them as the true ancestors of modern Cochins. The ‘Shanghai’ name didn’t stay with the fluffy new imports, though. Poultry writers called them Shanghai, but “The public had got to know the new, big fowls as Cochins, and would use no other word, and so the name stuck, in the teeth of the facts, and holds the field to this day,” he wrote.
Cochins, at 11 lbs. for roosters and 8 ½ lbs. for hens, are a dual purpose breed with good egg production. The American Poultry Association recognizes Buff, Partridge, White, Black, Silver laced, Golden laced, Blue, Brown and Barred varieties of the Cochin. Many unrecognized colors are also raised, including Red, Silver Laced, Mottled and Splash. Seventeen color varieties of bantam Cochins are recognized by the American Bantam Association, including Black Tailed Red, Birchen, Golden Laced, Columbian and Lemon Blue. Their popularity is second only to the English Game bantam.
Franklane Sewell, noted poultry expert and artist, wrote in 1912 that although style had influenced development of birds with very short legs, the ideal is “one that will preserve all the vitality of the ancient Asiatic and prove, as they have with some fanciers who study their proper management, to be productive and profitable as well as exceedingly showy.”
That description continues to suit Cochins well in the 21st century. Their soft feathers beg to be touched. Combined with their calm and friendly disposition, they make an excellent backyard chicken. The hens are often good broody hens and mothers.
Cochins International Club publishes three newsletters annually and updates its Breeders Directory every two years. Contact Jamie Matts, Secretary/Treasurer, 283 State Highway 235, Harpursville, NY 13787, (607) 693-3433.
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The International Crane Foundation was started in the 1970s by two Cornell University students studying for their PhD’s in Orinthology. They started the captive breeding of the various species of cranes on a horse farm in rural Baraboo, Wisconsin in 1972. Then, in 1973 they decided they would start the International Crane Foundation as an organization dedicated to the study of and preservation of the crane species.
In 1983 they outgrew the Sauey horse farm and expanded to the present day 225 acre location. The International Crane Foundation site includes a gift shop and a room with beautiful murals that tell the story of the Cranes where you can see a slideshow about cranes. There are guided tours, or headsets that you can rent, to tell the story as you walk through the displays that include all 15 species of cranes, a special natural habitat for the African Crowned Cranes and one for the Whooping Cranes. The entire area is natural prairie grasses. There is a library open by appointment and a museum style building telling about their efforts.
I personally started out raising chickens on my parents’ farm, and chickens were the primary species of bird that Danke Bros Poultry raised. Ducks were what got me started with Purely Poultry, which later grew into many different species. In the fall of 2009 I received a catalog that included swans, cranes, and wild ducks and geese and was intrigued.
I did not know that such a thing as captive bred wildlife existed. I thought that all the animals in zoos were captured from the wild directly and not bred by either a zoo or a captive breeder.
I also had no idea that there were such beautiful species as the Grey African Crowned Crane or the Black African Crown Crane for sale for people who want a beautiful bird in their backyard gardens.
I have developed my thinking beyond just wanting to promote backyard poultry as pets and sources of food. I now also want to pursue the development of captive breeding of wild species so that there can be ecological diversity within the captive populations so that if needed they can be successfully released into the wild.
I am unsure what is the best method of supporting captive bred conservation efforts. Right now with Purely Poultry I can write up descriptions to educate visitors to my site and offer birds for sale. I have access to educating those who raise domestic poultry about raising wild fowl.
Simply offering wild fowl for sale on my site is one small step toward doing what I can to support conservation efforts. As I continue to learn, I will continue to look for ways to help in the endeavor to keep healthy, diverse populations of wild birds being bred in captivity. Do you do anything to support the conservation of wild birds? Are you interested in learning more about it?
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At any grocery store in China there is no packaging on the chickens for sale there. When you are shopping for for chicken, you just start grabbing them with your bare hands and looking through a pile of chicken 
carcasses.
There were piles of ducks and geese for sale and one pile of chickens for sale that was all blue. They also had a pile of processed Silkies for sale! These had stickers on them with a drawing of a white Silkie. I was impressed to see that the drawing was crested and had 5 toes!
Eggs at the grocery stores in China included goose, duck, turkey and chicken. They also had eggs that looked like they had tobacco chunks around them. I think those were smoked or roasted or something.
In the United States at the checkout counter you see candy for that impulsive quick snack. In China chicken feet are hanging next to the register for sale as a snack.
People in China shop at open air markets as much as they do at grocery stores. The markets in China were a chance for me to see birds for sale in person, and it was fascinating. They were a mixture of what we would call a farmers market, a butcher shop, a poultry swap, a flea market, an aquarium shop and more.
The vendors were not separated or different kinds of items sold by separate people. One man had 
vegetables, many different kinds of fish, frogs, snakes and alligators, and eggs, chickens and more.
At the market there was one place that had poultry for sale in more quantity than others. Their ducks were kind of between a Rouen Duck and a Mallard Duck. The geese were somewhere in between a Chinese goose and an African goose. Their Pekins were about the same size.
They had some white pigeons and coturnix quail that they were keeping in industrial pet cages. This vendor at that stall in the market started to get angry with me for taking pictures and studying the situation. I was obviously not going to buy them but I was enjoying myself so much. Part of me wanted to pay him so that I could take pictures and stuff. 
At the entire market there was nothing refrigerated. There was fresh meat all over the place. If you wanted something you pointed to it, agreed on a price and they would start butchering it for you. I remember specifically one vendor that had cartons of cracked eggs for sale. I hope she wanted a lower price for those than what she wanted for the rest! But these were cracked eggs unrefrigerated in an open air market not far from the tub of frogs, pen of goats, fish tanks, and more. It seemed really unsanitary!
There was a billboard at the market with a chicken, pig, duck, goose, pigeon, quail, dog, cat, and goat for sale with a phone number. They would deliver the live animal to your home for you to process and have for supper.
It was really interesting to see the differences between poultry in China and poultry in the US. There was far more open air poultry raising, it was raised, butchered, sold and consumed differently. In some ways it was easy to see that the traditions regarding poultry were much less modern in China than in the US.
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I am grateful for having had the experience of travel to China. I want to thank you for reading about my travels. I want to thank my parents for allowing me to travel with mom. My brother Darren and his wife Eva (Chen Ming) for being our gracious hosts and tour guides, Eva’s family for opening their city home and their country home to us, and to Ruth for allowing me to be half a world apart from her.
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One of many wonderful meals we enjoyed on the trip
In this post, I want to share more specifically about the poultry we saw in China. There were poultry all over the place in China, everywhere I looked I would see something new and fascinating.
In the last post, I mentioned the family of Christians that we met and had tea with in their home. In villages in rural China, most people live in abject poverty and these kind people were no exception. It was especially kind of them to invite us in for tea, and later they displayed even greater generosity.
As we were entering their home, I saw a flock of chickens and paid great attention to them and and investigated them.
The Buff Chickens We Saw
They were Buff Columbian color pattern with big strong legs like a Buff Brahma. But they did not have feathered legs. The Christian family noticed that I was watching the chickens and that I was very interested in poultry.
While we were eating supper that night our Christian friends walked into the dining room with a live chicken for us as a gift. They insisted that we take it and that we have it for breakfast the next day. We got to butcher a chicken in China! Eva’s father butchered the chicken and I got to watch him. He collected the blood so that he could cook it.
Yinfu Countryside in Rural China
While riding the bus through rural southern China we saw ponds all over the place that had hundreds of ducks or geese on them. We probably drove by thousands of these ponds. It is like driving through Wisconsin and seeing a dairy farm, or driving through South Dakota and seeing a round bale of hay or Black Angus cattle; they were everywhere! Each pond had netting walls and covers on them. The ponds were filled with fish and had either ducks or geese on the banks and swimming on the pond. It seemed as though one pond would have White Pekins, the next pond would have Rouens or mallards, and the next pond would have Brown Chinese or Brown African Geese.
I wish I had been able to go visit these ponds in person instead of just seeing them from a bus. I would have liked to know if they were Rouens or Mallard ducks and if they were Chinese or African geese.
While in the countryside of Yinfu I also saw a flock of Muscovy Ducks. They were black muscovies that ran loose in the village. We saw many more ducks in China than you typically see in the US. Duck farms were all over the place and right along side the road in open air ponds. We rode the bus from Guangzhou to Yinfu, from Yinfu to XianXian where my brother had taught for a year. While we were riding the bus from Yinfu to Hong Kong there was a flat bed truck with yellow plastic crates of Pekin Ducks on it that passed by the bus. One of the crates was open and ducks were flying out of it. One duck was sitting behind the crates and I felt like it quacked, “See ya later” as it was driving past us.
Tyler the Poultryman in China
Shopping for poultry in China was much different than anything I’d ever experienced in the US. Next week’s post will be all about what we saw in the grocery stores and open air markets in China. Stay tuned for the final part of the series A Poultryman Goes to China.
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I love learning about poultry and how it is used in different way. On my trip in China I ate authentic Peking Duck, saw poultry in the grocery store, in live markets, ducks and pigeons on billboards and more. One thing I was asked several times before I left for the trip was if the trip was business or pleasure. Although the trip was planned for the purpose of visiting my brother and his new wife, I am a truly passionate poultryman so every time I would see poultry I would get excited. Check back next week to read some of what I saw of poultry in China.
In January 2010 I left my wife and new born son (only 3 months old at the time) and traveled to China with my 
mother. We went to visit my brother Darren, who was working as an English teacher, and to meet his wife Eva for the first time.
Darren and Eva were gracious enough to be our tour guides around China. We spent the first several days in Bejing which is where Darren was teaching at the time. We visited the Pearl Market, the Temple to Heaven, the Emperors Summer Palace, The Great Wall and many more sites. Bejing in January is very cold because it is in the northern part of China.
After seeing Bejing we flew to Guangzhao in Southern China which was nice because it was a welcomed change from the cold of the north. From Guangzhao we traveled directly to Yinfu which is where Eva grew up. Eva’s family has two homes. One in the city of Yinfu and one in the countryside around Yinfu, so we were able to sample daily life in a city and in the country in China.
Eva’s parents were very gracious hosts and we were able to enjoy several authentic experiences with them. We got the pleasure of picking oranges from the mountainside with Eva’s mother and enjoyed an awesome meal of Hot Pot which is lots of random vegetables, mystery meat balls, and other things boiled in a delicious broth in front of you while you eat.
While in the village of Yinfu we talked to some people and they were Christians! We sang Jesus Loves Me with them in Chinese and English! That was pretty exciting. They wanted to welcome fellow believers into their home to eat some oranges, drink some tea, and share God’s word and have fellowship with them. That was probably the most exciting part of the whole trip.
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