November 8, 1985

Dear Mr Plant:

I am very sorry about the extremely long delay in writing back to you. Things seem to get misplaced in the summer and I only recently came across your letter of last summer. I wish to thank you for the booklet The origin evolution, history and distribution of the domestic fowl. Part 2 chicken bone recoveries. I read it with interest and commend you on digging out this information.

As to the origin of the Araucana fowl, I have no pet theories of my own. I have read what others have guessed at, but as you say it is still a hit of a mystery, it is truly a unique bird. I am not aware of any other breed that has ear-tufts and lays the blue egg. Most breed traits are fairly wide spread, but these two are not. Most interesting. Also the rumplessness trait, although not exclusively Araucana, is not very wide spread. This breed is truly an interesting mystery.

As for the linkage between pea comb and blue shell color, I sometimes think that people try to make too much of this. When we say that these two traits are linked, we are only saying that they are located on the same chromosome and in this particular case they are very close together (see chromosome 1 on page 51 in the Registry). The pea gene might have been introduced into South America as you suggest or it may have mutated there as you suggest the blue gene did. They are both dominant genes and thus would be easy to select for once they had appeared. You mentioned one of my papers on the Araucana breed. We have done quite a bit with this breed and thus I am sending you a complete set of papers on this work for your interest under separate cover.

Your comment about the FORWARD in Bulletin 469 was appreciated and most particularly by its author, my wife. She wrote that several editions ago and I have used it ever since. We would be most happy to have you use it in your Club’s Newsletter. Good luck in your breeding efforts and once again I am sorry about the delay in answering your letter.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph G.Somes, Jr.
Professor of Nutritional Sciences