Booted Bantam

The Booted Bantam or Dutch Booted Bantam is a European breed of true bantam chicken. It is characterised by abundant feathering on the feet and shanks, which gives it a "booted" appearance; and by vulture hocks, long stiff downward-pointing feathers on the backs of the thighs, from which the Dutch name Sabelpoot ('sabre-legged') derives.

History

The history of the Booted Bantam is complicated, aspects of it involving Belgian bantams, the German Federfüßige Zwerghühner, the Dutch Sabelpoot and bantams in the United Kingdom. Feather-footed bantams have been present in Europe for hundreds of years; birds of this type are pictured in the works of Ulisse Aldrovandi and Aelbert Cuyp in the seventeenth century, and of Eleazar Albin in the eighteenth.

Albin's description of 1738 says of the bantam cock "... from the Thighs grew long stiff Feathers reaching beyond his Knees two Inches, which they call Boots; his Legs were also feathered down to his Toes ...", while of the hen he says "... she was booted and feathered down to her Toes, as all the true Bantam kind are"; he is clear that these birds were originally brought from "Bantam in India".

These birds were not included in the first British poultry standard, the Standard of Excellence in Exhibition Poultry of William Tegetmeier of 1865, but were described in detail in his The Poultry Book of 1867; he mentions that a pure white colour variety had recently been shown. Both the white and the black variety are thought to have been bred in the United Kingdom; the black variant is documented at least from 1841, when William Flamank Entwisle received a pair as a gift.

The birds were present in the United States by 1836, when they were being bred in Massachusetts.