A little Java History

[cowboygourmet]

The Java chicken is one of the oldest American chickens, forming the basis for many other breeds. Despite the breed's name, which comes from the island of Java in Indonesia, it was developed in the U.S. and it is not known exactly where in Asia its ancestors came from. After the Dominique, the Java is the second oldest breed developed in the U.S. even though its name would suggest a Javan background. It was first mentioned in print in 1835, but it is thought to have been present well before this time. Javas are slow-growing chickens compared to the broilers used by the commercial chicken industry today, they are great meat birds. The hens lay a quantity of large, brown eggs and will hatch their young. Javas are particularly known as good foragers, needing less supplementary grain than many breeds when allowed to free range. Like many large breeds, they are known to be docile in temperament. In general, Javas are particularly suitable for keepers of smaller flocks who require a good dual-purpose chicken. The males can reach 9.5 pounds and females 7.5 pounds. Javas had nearly vanished by the end of the 20th century, having been pushed to fringes of the poultry world by the intense focus on one or two breeds by commercial growers, and the introduction of innumerable new and exotic breeds to poultry fanciers. Javas were especially notable as meat production birds throughout the 19th century, with their popularity peaking in the latter half of that century
We find ourselves today at a turning point in the history of this awesome bird. Do we make a headstrong effort to promote this breed or do we simply just let it fade into history. As for myself, I choose to do what I can to promote and to find good people to breed Javas to the standard and to promulgate interesting dialog from which others may learn and use in furthering the expansion of this breed.

[Ruth Caron]

I want to knowmore about the history of bantam Javas. Does anyone know of them?

[resolution]

Hi Forum. My name is Kermit. I'm a bit of a selection breeding nerd and have been investigating the origins of breeds that we consider old cultural heirlooms, the Rhode Island Red and Plymouth Rock for example.
This led me to the Black Java and by association some really compelling Indonesian breeds.
I’m searching for some really good quality Black Java stock to add to my own and discovered this forum. Reading around the Internet about the Black Java is underwhelming for lack of information. Thought I’d compile some-write this opus.
I hope barging in here and overtyping doesn't ruffle any feathers.

The Black Java proved an interesting research subject for my studies in ethnozoology and livestock breed origins because of its significance as a major breed at the foundation of important historical American breeds. Moreover, its genetics- reveal the value of its ever-refined bloodstock through critical periods in history. The genetic makeup of the breed we know as the Black Java obviously have a history of their own and gaining some understanding of the mechanics of this selective breeding over the centuries prior to the development of our modern breed affords us a neat look backward in time.

a. In the 1600's Dutch hegemony over the Indonesia began, exporting goods and materials including livestock back to Europe was a profitable trade. Important chicken strains were created that would become the foundation of erstwhile Dutch breeds.

One old breed called “ New Batavia” or Twentse, was the Predecessor of a better-known and improved breed called Kraienköppe (much younger version of the original “New Batavia”/Twentse).

Ironically, the “New Batavia”/Twentse originated from composites of Indo-Malay fighting game chickens brought from the Dutch East Indies and crossed with Mediterranean standard breed stock. We don't know with certainty what the Mediterranean stock living in northern Europe looked like at the time but it was probably akin to the old Prat Catalan and to the Lakenvelder. They represent two of the more primitive genotypes of Mediterranean chickens.
Mediterranean was the dominant chicken race in the Netherlands until that point in time when Indo-Malay genetics were introduced to Europe-(largely by the Dutch) during the 17th century.

The Lakenvelder is probably the oldest Mediterranean breed, originating in Jerusalem and carried into Roman Germany during the first century A.D.. However, something more similar to the Catalan was the dominant production breed in many port cities during the 17th century, about the time Europeans began to colonize further afield.

1800’s the influence of Spanish agriculture in the American South, introduced Castellana Negra to plantations where it was greatly admixtured, early on, with Old English Game. By the mid-1800's, this Castellana X English Game composite breed was sometimes referred to as the "Old Time Java", a celebrated pit fowl. This name may well have been due to the inclusion of “New Batavia”/Twentse imported into the U.S.A. via Dutch West Indies about the same time (mid-1800's).

Poultry products were an ever-growing commodity during the 19th century and the refinement of the “Old-Time Java” X Croad Langshan composite strain was a good investment for southern Victorian agriculturists. This is not dissimilar to what would happen with the development of the Rhode Island Red, which is descended of a composite with a generous proportion of its genetics from the Malay, introduced by the Chinese during late 1800's.

During the Late 1800's Croad Langshan were imported into the United States and they were bred into the “Old Time Java” as well. Plantations and farms were relatively isolated at this point in American history and flocks of birds of a specific conformation and colour could be cultivated in segregation from all others. Mongrelized birds were for slave shanties and poor white settlements. Cultivated estates maintained special strains that symbolized the prestige and stability of the society of a different socio-economic class. I don't mean to write that in any insensitive manner. It just is what it is. I didn't create agricultural history, I just write it.

b. 1900’s wealthy Dutch families from Indonesia (after failure of the Dutch East Indies Company in Java after four centuries of hegemony) arrived in North America during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. They introduced stock that was essentially similar in many respects with "Old Time Java".
This respective breed carried from Indonesia by the Dutch to the USA has long been known in Indonesia as the "Ayam Kedu". IT was developed in the Kedu region of Java in Dutch farm estates.

It was about this time in American history where the southern “Old Time Java” was reintroduced with “New Batavia” stock but this newly imported stock was not the Twentse strain of New Batavia of Northern Europe. It was quite different because it had been thoroughly redefined in Java Indonesia over a two hundred year period in the region of Kedu.

During Dutch hegemony of Java from the 1600’s through the 1800’s, Indonesian agriculturists maintained and worked the Dutch farms, plantations and etc.. They created the breed themselves in collaboration with the Dutch. Whereas the “New-Batavia” cultivated in Europe to deal with cold wet weather was uniquely suited for life there, the Ayam Kedu (Indonesian) strain of the New Batavia was selected to to thrive in climatic conditions of subtropical, arid Java, while still producing the succulent white carcass and large white eggs of the Mediterranean class standard fowl preferred by the Europeans. The Kedu also needed to lay consistently, something the native chickens are not known for. It should be remembered that eggs are not a primary or even a secondary source of nutrition in Indonesia. Fish and shrimp fill that role in the native nutrition.
Moreover, the Indonesian strain had to be much better foragers and survivors than their European cousins as well.
Another nice thing about Indonesian stock is that their reproductive clock is set for the southern hemisphere (south of the equator)- that is- their winter is our summer and our summer is their winter.
This phenomenon is why South American and Indonesian chicken breeds tend to be better winter egg layers than their northern Asian and European counterparts.

So- according to my old Netherlander poultry mentor, the Black Java is a much-cultivated composite of Southern “Old Time Java” and Indonesian “New Batavia”. This amounts to it being a North American Kedu.