Dominique chicken
Oldest American chicken breed with rose comb and barred plumage.
The Dominique is an American breed of chicken with black-and-white barred plumage and a rose comb. It is considered the oldest American chicken breed and is kept principally for its brown eggs. Its numbers declined in the twentieth century but have since recovered.
Quick Facts
- Country
- United States
- Use
- dual-purpose, eggs and meat
- Pcgb
- rare soft feather: heavypcgb
- Skincolor
- yellow
- Eggcolor
- brown
- Comb
- rose
- Latin
- Gallus gallus domesticus
Facts from the source article.
History
The Dominique chicken is America’s oldest known breed, though its exact beginnings remain a mystery. It likely came from birds—possibly resembling today’s Dorking or Sussex—brought over by English colonists from the south of England. By around 1750, barred-feathered chickens with either a single or rose comb were already familiar, and by the mid-1800s they were common across the eastern United States. People called them by many names, such as Blue Spotted Hen, Dominic, Dominicker, Dominico, Old Grey Hen, and Pilgrim Fowl, but the most common label was Dominique. Early poultry books treated them as a valuable American breed, and some were shown at the first U.S. poultry exhibition in Boston in 1849. In the 1860s, breeders crossed Black Java chickens with large, single-combed Dominiques to create the Plymouth Rock, which debuted at a show in 1869. A New York poultry show in 1870 decided that only rose-combed barred birds could compete as Dominiques; those with single combs had to be entered as Plymouth Rocks. This rule was set in a Dominique Standard of Excellence the following year. The breed made it into the first American Standard of Perfection in 1874, and a bantam version joined in 1960. Numbers fell sharply during the 1900s, and by the 1970s the Dominique nearly vanished. A recovery effort started in 1983, and populations began climbing. Until around 2003, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy listed its status as critical, with fewer than 500 breeding birds in North America. By 2021, it had improved to “watch” and was reported to DAD-IS as not at risk.
Characteristics
The Dominique is a medium-sized chicken. Its only accepted feather pattern is cuckoo, which features regular light and dark bars rather than black and white. It carries a rose comb with a single backward-pointing spike, red earlobes and wattles, and a yellow beak. Its legs and feet are also yellow. The feathers lie close to the body, and this, along with the rose comb, provides better frostbite resistance than some other breeds.
More in Conservation Priority Breeds of the Livestock Conservancy
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