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Indian Game (poultry)

chicken breed

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ677692
Source-derived summary

The Indian Game is a British breed of game chicken, now reared either for meat or exhibition. It originated in the early nineteenth century in the counties of Cornwall and Devon in south-west England. It is a heavy, muscular bird with an unusually broad breast; the eggs are light brown.

In the United States the name was changed in the early twentieth century to Cornish. A white variant, the White Cornish, was developed there at about the same time, and is much used in modern industrial chicken meat production in many parts of the world, either for cross-breeding to produce hybrid broilers, or to produce fast-growing "game hens".

History

The Indian Game was developed by Sir Walter Gilbert, of Bodmin in Cornwall, in about 1820. It was intended to be a game-cock, but had no aptitude for cockfighting.

It is recognised as "Indian Game" in Australia, by the Poultry Club of Great Britain in the United Kingdom, and by the Entente Européenne in Europe. In the United States the name was changed in 1905 to "Cornish Indian Game", and then in 1910 to "Cornish". It was accepted by the American Poultry Association in 1893.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Indian Game (poultry)” as chicken breed. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Indian, Game and poultry.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1820, 1905, 1910, 1893—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Indian, Game and poultry providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Indian Game (poultry)”, the useful work is to connect “chicken breed” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q677692. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1820, 1905, 1910 and 1893.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Indian Game (poultry)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Indian Game (poultry) primary sources, Indian Game (poultry) archive and Indian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Indian Game (poultry)”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Indian Game (poultry)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.