20-3-1985

Dear Mr Plant,

Thank you for your letter of 20/2/85. I have been thinking it over for a while. And I remembered an article on Araucana in the National Geographic Magazine of September 1948 written by Vosburgh under the name Easter egg chickens. The Author wrote it because he was fascinated by a earlier large article in the NGM of April 1927 The races of Domestic Fowl, 30 pages, by Jull with 67 illustrations and 29 paintings from live by Hashime Murayama. One of the paintings shows 3 Araucanas, rumpless with ear tufts, laying blue eggs.

In the 1948 article it’s written about research on the breed by Dr Alexander Wetmore, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and Vice-Chairman of the National Geographic Society’s Research  Committee. I quote:

“The origin of the blue-egg-laying characteristics is unknown. One story is that chickens which landed from a wrecked vessel crossed with the Tinamou, a small South American member of the ostrich tribe, which is virtually tailless and lays colored eggs. However Dr Wetmore, a distinguished ornithologist told me that he believed, this would be biologically impossible. He is convinced that the Araucana like all other American breeds, is derived from chickens imported to the New World from the Old.”

One of these days I read The Chicken Book written by Page Smith (historian) and Charles Daniel (biologist) in 1975. The story these Americans wrote on Araucana is very interesting. I’ll quote:

“We have already assigned the earliest chickens, at least tentatively, to India, the Chinese mainland, Southeast Asia, and, by diffusion over sea-lanes to the Pacific islands. But by the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico the Incas were thoroughly familiar with chickens and the name of the last Inca, Atahualpa, was the Quechua name for chicken. Thus evidence and common sense are strongly on the side of the pre-Columbian chicken. The only question that remains (and one that probably cannot be answered with any certainty) is whether the chicken was indigenous to America, that is to say whether birds closely related to the chicken were domesticated by tribes of the Americas or whether they had been brought across the ocean by Polynesian sailors or even, perhaps, by the Egyptians themselves.

In support of the indigenous chicken it might be pointed out that grouse and chickens are so closely related as to be almost indistinguishable in their bone structure. Certainly, the South American Araucanas have a decidedly grouselike appearance.

In addition the Araucanas bear a striking resemblance to Asiatic breeds. The pure Araucanas are rumpless and melanoid (black in pigmentation). I suspect that chickens were in fact brought to the west coast of South America by venturers whose voyages are unrecorded in any historical annals. These birds may very well have mated with native grouse.

What is most striking of all, and perhaps gives the strongest support to the theory of indigenous South American chickens, is the fact that the Araucanas are unique among breeds of chicken in the world for their green and blue eggs. Moreover they take their name from the ruggedly independent Indians of the Chilean mountains who remained remarkably free of western influences until the end of the nineteenth century, when the first Araucana chickens were identified.

Perhaps the last word can be left to José de Acosta, a Jesuit missionary who wrote in 1590: "I must say I was astonished at the Fowls which without doubt were kept there even before the coming of the Spaniards, this being clear by the fact that the natives have names of their own for them, calling a hen gualpa and an egg ronto."

A later visitor noted: "In the first accounts we have of the conquest, we frequently hear of hens and the name leads us to believe that they were like our own; this, however is not so and only the birds of Paraguay and Tucuman were somewhat similar to ours."

You want me to comment your theory on Araucanas. It is a good theory but I also like the theory in the Chicken Book. It is possible to cross a chicken and a common pheasant and have fertile descendants. So, why not a grouse x chicken cross. It is rare and it is possible to get infertile birds, but there are crosses which proofed to be fertile.

The ISBN number of the Chicken book is 0-86547-067-7 and the price is 12 dollar.

In the old Dutch standard, which I quote earlier, the Araucana are listed under wild fowl. This list covers G.bankiva, G.lafayettei, G.sonnerati, G.varius, G.giganteus and Araucana. I think to consider Araucanas an original wild breed, which is crossed with Asiatic and Spanish domesticated fowls is also a good theory. You know that the fauna on the different continents is not equal in America, Africa and Australia the development of the fauna is not equal to the development on Eurasia each continent has an own fauna and therefore South American chickens can have developed on their own way and differ from other chickens.

I have the first eggs of the season in the incubator but in spite of the date it is not spring here. We had some snow this morning but now it melted.

Nice that you have your Easter shows and meetings in Australia. Here it is a quiet time, but this week I’ll talk about bantams with slides at the poultry club here.

Sincerely, and have a good time there at the other side.