Sumatra chicken
breed of chicken
The Sumatra is a European and North American breed of chicken. It derives from birds imported in the nineteenth century from the island of Sumatra in Indonesia as fighting cocks.
History
The Sumatra derives from birds brought in 1847 from the island of Sumatra in Indonesia to the United States for use as fighting cocks. It was recognised in the United States in 1883 and in the United Kingdom in 1906. Birds were imported to Germany from the United States in 1882.
Characteristics
The original colour of the Sumatra was the black – often with a rich beetle-green sheen – which was added to the American Standard of Perfection in 1883, and was standardised in Britain in 1906. The blue is the only other colour recognised by the American Poultry Association; it was added in 2003. The Poultry Club of Great Britain recognises black, blue and white, while the Entente Européenne recognises the black, black-red and wild type but not the blue.
Cocks weigh 2.25–2.70 kg, and hens about 1.80 kg. The comb is pea-shaped and as small as possible.
“Sumatra chicken” enters the record as breed of chicken. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sumatra, chicken and breed can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sumatra chicken” 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.