Orpingtons
In 1880, William Cook began experimenting by combining a number of popular breeds with the aim of producing a breed “of handsome appearance and a good winter layer.” Seven years later he had produced the first Orpington chicken, named after the town of Orpington in his native England. The earliest Orpingtons were intentionally bred to be dark birds so they wouldn’t show the soot that settled on them from the polluted air of a newly industrialized Great Britain. Cook, who rose from humble beginnings as a coachman to become an international poultry entrepreneur, introduced the birds to America in 1890. Cook would later own breeding farms in England, the United States, and South Africa. Orpingtons were adopted by upper-class Britons as a superior breed that reflected their owners’ superior breeding. Today, Orpingtons are the most popular breed in England, the lingering result of Cook’s skills as a breeder and as a tireless salesman of the breed he had created.
Orpingtons are large, flightless chickens, and their most distinctive characteristic is the huge round bodies of the hens that give them the appearance of having been derived from inadvertently crossing a chicken with a basketball. It must be said: The wildly exaggerated butts of a classic Orpington are unlike anything in the poultry kingdom, and they dwarf the other features of the bird. Orpingtons are easy to raise, and a mere 18” fence is generally sufficient to frustrate the wanderlust of a full-grown Orpington.
Jubilee Orpingtons stand at the pinnacle of the breed, and Greenfire Farms was the first to import these birds into America from British stock. With their huge, round bodies and striking color pattern, they create an unforgettable impression. These are the largest variety of any Orpington we have seen, and with their deep mahogany bodies punctuated with flecks of ruby and emerald, their visual impact is difficult to overstate. Despite their remarkable size and appearance, jubilees are among the most gentle of any chicken breed. Gorgeous, calm, and prolific egg layers, they manage to strike a wonderful balance between beauty and utility.
Chocolate Orpingtons have achieved cult status among poultry hobbyists. The “chocolate” gene, so called because it imparts a rich brown hue to the color of chicken feathers, is the Holy Grail of color traits among the dedicated chicken enthusiasts. The gene was originally described in 1994 by the late British geneticist, Dr. Clive Carefoot, when he observed the unusual color mutation in a single Orpington hen. He discovered that the chocolate gene is sex-linked: hens with the gene always display chocolate color while roosters with the recessive gene hide the chocolate color. When the chocolate gene manifests, not only does it add a chocolate color to the feathers but also the skin and beak of a chocolate bird. Dr. Carefoot chose not to widely distribute the gene, instead working until his death to breed the gene into several types of chickens including bantam chocolate Orpingtons.
The quality of the color varies considerably among chocolate Orpingtons, so Greenfire Farms has been diligent in seeking out the deepest and richest chocolate coloring as a basis for bringing the chocolate gene to America. We have imported bantam chocolate Orpingtons (and they are very large bantams) into the United States from two top breeders in Britain so we are able to offer you pairs of their unrelated offspring; a significant advantage if you want to maximize the genetic diversity and health of your breeding flock. To the best of our knowledge Greenfire Farms is the only source of unrelated chocolate Orpingtons in North America.
Although the British chocolate Orpington lines have many strengths, they also carry with them some notable weaknesses. We have found that all lines of British chocolate Orpingtons currently in the United States occasionally produce chicks with light feathering on their legs; a deviation from the breed standard. Of greater concern, we have heard from poultry hobbyists that chocolate Orpingtons from some sources have very low disease resistance, and mortality is high in young adult birds. Both of these problems are probably linked to inbreeding. To address these problems we have acquired championship lines of black Orpingtons to cross into chocolate lines in order to further boost the genetic diversity of this variety. This strategy has proven effective in reducing the frequency of these flaws in the chocolate young they produce.
Greenfire Farms also introduced gold laced Orpingtons to America. This variety of Orpington was created in Germany by Jobst Veltheim in the early 1960s. They were shown in the Frankfurt Show for the first time in 1965. The birds later slowly spread through Europe although they still remain exceedingly rare. The breed has been ardently pursued in Britain where we found our breeders. With the dramatic contrast between their burnt gold base color and the precise black penciling that defines the lacing on their feathers, it is hard to imagine a more striking color pattern for the backyard flock. The hens have the black lacing over most of their bodies while the roosters have a lion’s mane of pure gold and lacing spread across their broad chests. Coupled with their large body size and classic British Orpington shape, these birds are now poised to create a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic.
Greenfire Farms is also raising lemon cuckoo Orpingtons. ”Lemon” rather obviously refers to the beautiful yellow color of the feathers. ”Cuckoo” refers to the white barring pattern that is prominent in the roosters. This color pattern is the result of intriguing genetics. Essentially, there is a color gene that dilutes with white the darker color of a standard buff Orpington. This produces the bright yellow color. A second gene, active only in the roosters, creates the striking barring pattern; white alternates with the yellow. So, hens have a fairly uniform bright yellow color and roosters show the more flamboyant white and yellow stripes.
Lemon cuckoo Orpingtons originated in the United Kingdom and a few years ago were imported into the United States by means that remain a mystery. We think, but are not certain, that a single pair was established here, possibly hatched from eggs for which we have never been able to find a copy of an official import permit. The original pair, which may have been brother and sister, did not fully reflect the classic British Orpington shape with the large round body and huge cushion at the rear. And, young produced from these birds (possibly because of inbreeding) had unusual defects, the most obvious of which was, weirdly, the lack of a claw on the middle toe of the chickens’ feet.
To correct these problems we found one of the best lines of buff Orpingtons in America and over a period of years crossed the lemon cuckoos into this line. We eventually produced pure lemon cuckoo Orpingtons that show none of the defects of the original line. We are offering the offspring of these birds, and for a relatively low price you can now own these exotic and docile chickens.
Greenfire Farm’s most recent Orpington “first” is the importation into the United States of the red Orpington. Red was added to the Orpington palette in 1910, and despite the beauty of this color red Orpingtons have remained rare. Great strides have been made in improving the body type, and some of the best representatives of this variety can be found outside Britain in the Netherlands and Germany. In those countries red Orpingtons have a dedicated following that breed birds for the demanding show circuit. Greenfire Farms has sought out the exemplars of this variety to bring you large birds with a deep, pure red color.
