This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

A new commemorative breed

The tradition of commemorative chicken breeds is an honored one; from the Columbian Plymouth Rock variety created in honor of the Columbian Exposition, to the Coronation Sussex in honor of King George, the breeders of poultry have honored memorable events with new poultry varieties. Both of these were far less expensive events than the Bay Area Bridge with its attendant party.

Truly the new Bay Bridge deserves its own commemorative breed.

Last night the l TV news explained that the new Bay Bridge was ten years late and around 5 billion over budget, and might not open until 2014 due to suspect construction and design. The next story covered how SF spent a great deal of money subsidizing the America's Cup race in the hopes of income from visitors and racing fans, and detailed how seats in the viewing area were now free of charge because no one was particularly interested in watching - even the food stands don't bother to open up anymore. It seems everyone interested in watching is out on a boat with a pair of binoculars.

Find out what's happening in Newarkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

So, I got to thinking about it. In addition to a suspect bridge that many commuters might choose to avoid, and a BART strike, we have the strong SF Bay culture of sailing. Is it possible that many commuters will choose to sail to work in order to avoid possibly dropping into the Bay and to avoid the endless delays and strikes of BART?

What about our strong green culture, with the desire to save water by xeriscaping and not creating needless garbage, such as discarded cans of air or batteries from boat horns?  And what about the interest in fancy poultry that are highly decorative and lay colored eggs? And the concurrent goal of having birds that can successfully forage in the Bay Area and reduce the green house gases involved in the production and shipping of chicken feed?

Find out what's happening in Newarkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Obviously, we have a niche for a designer chicken for those who will now be sailing to work in SF as opposed to riding the not running BART or crossing the Bridge of Damocles.

A uniquely Bay Area bird would lay a highly visible colored egg, and be a beautiful decorative ornamental living boat horn, and would be capable of living happily in a xeriscape without any additional water,  and would conscientiously forage in the mud flats while the boat is in its slip.

Some of the answer is found in Java, with the green jungle fowl. Adapted to live with little fresh water in mangrove swamps, in the dry season it lives on collected dew, and the liquids found in fruits and insects. In addition to insects, the birds feed on aquatic animals washed up on the shores and in littoral pools, which Red Jungle Fowl can't do. At low tide,  these wonderful birds forage for starfish, small crabs, copepods and detritus. At high tide they fly to mangrove islets to roost.

The Indonesian tradition has done much for us, the Javanese have bred living boat horns in the form of a half-domestic chicken, half-green jungle fowl known as the Ayam Bekisar,  that is the perfect starting point for a new Bay Bridge commemorative chicken. Unfortunately, males from this cross are prone to fertility issues when crossed with domestic fowl, and it takes generations of backcrosses to produce fertile females. Fortunately that part of the work has already been done in the form of various landraces descended from Ayam Bekisar crosses found on  Ponape, the Marquesas and Rapa Nui. So, the first step would be to simply select those cocks and hens whose male descendants have farthest carrying, loudest calls.

To set the egg color, crossing the birds with the best calls to some of the best true Americauna blue egg layers. This is only sensible, given that the blue egg laying Aracauna itself apparently inherited its ability to lay colored eggs from remote green jungle fowl ancestors.


The descendants of this cross, with the best egg color and voices would have there genes  concentrated using backcrosses to fix traits.

The former mayor of Oakland and current governor of California, Jerry Brown deserves commemoration in the development of this bridge. His pioneering efforts to involve an extremely diverse group of bridge  stakeholders in planning the bridge are especially noteworthy, given that they included architects, bicyclists, hikers, mass transit officials and many other groups, every stakeholder imaginable with the exception of the majority of bridge users who drive vehicles across it.

Therefore,  the best of the line bred birds would be crossed to Brown Leghorns in order to give this new breed a decorative color, a loud carrying crow, and beautiful blue eggs.

But the end results would be worth it.

Ladies and gentleman, there you have it, the Brown Foghorn Leghorn.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Newark