ceylon's jungle fowl

Back - Summary - Next

dessin de coqs lafayette

CEYLON'S JUNGLE FOWL

Gallus lafayettii, sometimes also named Gallus Stanleyi. In French : Le coq de Lafayette.

The natural environment is strictly limited to the Ceylon where it holds the busy ecological place somewhere else by Bankiva. It is an animal of very wild humor, more still than Bankiva. Cocks are redoubtable fighters and pass on this warlike humor to the hybrids which they can have with domestic hens.

The first scientific description, by an ornithologue, a date of 1831. Since the main specialized authors spoke about it, with sometimes some contradictions. So opinions diverge on the fertility of hybrids obtained with domestic hens. Jean Delacour asserts having obtained, in Clères's park, between two wars, fertile hybrids.

The shape of the cock goes away a little from that domestic birds. The silhouette is more lengthened(stretched out), forms still stressed with a horizontal port(bearing) of tail with first rather long but little arched sickles. The plumage is long, in particular feathers down from the back and from the breast, these last ones being disentangled as those of the camail. The lancets of loins are plentiful. The crest is red but is decorated, in sound centres, of a wide yellow band(strip); she(it) is of size average and little pinked to the cock, non-existent to the hen. The bare face of the cock forms with mumps, throat(breast) and two barbs a set(group) of red skin. The general tone of the plumage is clearer than to Bankiva. Camail and breast are yellow gold-coloured, sometimes red, with dark flames in the centre of feathers. Tarsi are colour of flesh.

In their country, Lafayette reproduces during the major part of the year. Under our climates, pontes, each little plentiful, succeeds one another of spring in the end of the summer. The chicks are relatively delicate and must be fed with the food for pheasants. Those born in spring should not have gone out too much early and those been born in summer should cross(spend) their first winter in a premises slightly warmed. Cocks take their definitive plumage and can reproduce only at the age of two years. It(he) does not exist, as to Bankiva, two annual metamorphoses(sloughs) with plumage of eclipse in summer but an only and long summery metamorphosis(slough) during which the crest of the cock becomes mat and decreases in size. The shout of the cock is very different from that of the domestic poultry and contains only two syllables. Little exported by the country and relatively delicate in the young age, Lafayette is almost impossible to find in France.

Back - Summary - Ceylon's jungle fowl - The species homepage - Next