Do you know that not all chickens are beautiful and there are also some of the world’s ugliest chicken breeds? Calling a chicken ugly is subjective but after creating a poll in our Facebook Group with more than 50,000 members, we come up with the result.
People raise chickens obviously for many reasons. Aside from the main purpose of eggs and meat, chickens are raised for games, pets, and even emotional support.
Surely, chickens are one of the most lovely animals but not all of them can be appealing to everyone’s eyes.
In this article, we are going to show you the world’s ugliest chicken breeds and most bizarre-looking chickens according to many sources. Please take note that the list is a result of a survey conducted through our Facebook Group with more than 50,000 chicken raisers and growers. You may not agree with some of the chickens listed below but let us leave the argument behind.
10 of the World’s Ugliest Chicken Breeds
1. Naked Chicken
This chicken seems to be unrealistic if you don’t know its existence. The featherless chicken is a bizarre and terrifying breed of chicken created by researchers, led by Avigdor Cahaner at the genetics faculty of the Rehovot Agronomy Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Also known as the naked chicken, the purpose behind this man-made monstrosity was to create a chicken that is cheaper more convenient, and more efficient compared to the typical, everyday chicken we all know and love. Interestingly, this strange breed is not genetically modified but is the result of a 50-year effort, using natural breeding methods. If you wonder what a zombie chicken would look like, then it could be this chicken.
Naked Chicken
2. Dong Tao
This weird-looking breed with bulbous scaled legs is one of the most expensive breeds in the world, just a pair of these birds costs around $2,000 in the US and other territories! Interestingly, the legs can grow to be as thick as a person’s wrist!
Also known as the dragon chickens of Vietnam, they were once bred exclusively for the country’s royal family but are now served in high-end restaurants.
The breed originates from the Dong Tao commune (hence the name) in Khoai Chau district, about 20 miles from Hanoi.
Are you rich enough to buy a couple of ones for breeding purposes? Better give it a second thought! This is a really hard chicken to raise! They are extremely sensitive to climate change, lay a few eggs, and need a lot of attention. Still, they are supposed to be very tasty so I guess it’s worth a try if you can afford it!
Although this chicken is one of the most expensive chicken breeds, fortunately, not many Filipinos are interested in growing this monstrous-looking bird.
3. White Silkie
Meet the Chinese Silkie, a breed named after its fluffy plumage, which according to some feels like silk and satin. But the fluffy looks aren’t the only weird thing about this chicken!
This breed is well known for some other anatomical oddities, like its black skin and bones, blue earlobes, and the five toes on each foot, when most chickens have just four. The exact origins of this breed are unknown, but most data seem to point to ancient China.
Although the white silkie is one of the most docile and friendly breeds, making it one of the coolest pets to have around, what makes it ugly is its dark skin in contrast with its white fine plumage. It’s like Shitzu in dogs. Cute if you look from the distance but if as you come closer looking at its face, it’s ugly.
Chinese White Silkie
4. Polish Chicken
Polish chicken is a breed best known for its feathery headgear and inconsistent plumage. Despite what their name would have you think, the Polish chicken might not originate from Poland. Yes, that is one possibility. However, the oldest recorded accounts about this breed come from the Netherlands. The name possibly originates from the Middle Dutch word “pol”, for the head, a reference to the Polish’s dome-shaped skull.
Although it was originally a very productive egg layer, nowadays it is mainly bred for shows and comes in three varieties; bearded, non-bearded, and frizzle. Polich Chicken is one of the most untidy chickens!
5. Serama
Seramas are one of the ugliest chicken breeds. Despite this, they’re sweet and lovable and come in a wild assortment of colors, feather patterns, and feather types. They’re one of the few breeds that allow frizzles (curly feathers) and silkies (down feathers) onto the show table. Not allowed on the show table, but still in existence, are also booted varieties with feathered feet.
They come in over 2,500 different colors and are so loved in their native Malaysia that Serama-only beauty pageants are a huge deal there. Because they are only the size of a pigeon, these tiny wonders make for great house pets both in Malaysia and abroad. They are the world’s smallest breed of chicken and have been flaunting their stuff in the United States since they were first imported in 2001.
What makes Seramas ugly is their feathers and their size and stature.
6. Black Sumatra
The Sumatra is a breed of chickens native to the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. These chickens were originally imported from Sumatra in 1847 to the U.S. and Europe as fighting cocks for entertainment, but today the breed is primarily kept for exhibition. 1883 is the year Sumatra was admitted to the American Standard of Perfection.
Black is beautiful. We have the Black Australorp, Jersey Giants, and others, but what makes Black Sumatra ugly is its irregular untidy tail.
7. Onagdori
The Onagadori is a historic Japanese breed of chicken, characterized by an exceptionally long tail. It was bred in the seventeenth century in Kōchi Prefecture, on Shikoku island in southern Japan, and was designated a Japanese National Natural Treasure in 1952. It is one of the ancestors of the German Phoenix breed.
This bizarre bird was bred to decorate the Imperialist Garden of Japan. They look more or less like every other chicken except the rooster sport fantastically long tails which take years to grow and can exceed twenty feet in length! Of course, this comes at a cost. Since chickens are not accustomed to such flamboyant plumage, they take a lot of extra care to maintain.
Only the most pampered of roosters can keep the feathers of their tail from breaking and keep growing their beautiful train. This isn’t to mention that they drag on the ground and need to be kept extra clean as well. They are indeed a spectacle to behold, but perhaps that’s where they should stay. Onagadori probably isn’t going to find too many people willing to primp them for their vanity.
8. Rumpless Game
The Rumpless Game is a British breed of tail-less chicken. It may have originated on the Isle of Man and may thus be known as the Manx Rumpy. There are both standard-sized and bantam Rumpless games.
Rumpless Game chickens exist almost wholly within the Araucana breed. When they hatch, they are short of a few vertebrae, in particular the ones that would normally hold up tail feathers, so they end up looking more like a dodo bird than a chicken. And since they hailed from Araucanas, they lay blue eggs. The absence of a tail is what makes this chicken ugly.
9. Modern Game
The Modern Game is a breed of ornamental chicken that originated in England between 1850 and 1900. Purely an exhibition bird, Modern Game was developed to be most aesthetically pleasing and to epitomize the visual appeal of the gamecock or fighting cock.
About 100 years ago these birds were bred for cockfighting, but that wasn’t to last as cockfighting became illegal in England, their home country. They continued to be very popular in the US for fighting until Louisiana became the last state in the union to ban cockfighting in 2007. As of 2019, it is also federally illegal in all US territories. By that time these birds had endeared themselves not just to the seedy world of cockfighting but also to show breeders and pet owners. It’s at this point they started to be bred to be smaller, less aggressive, and come in every color under the sun. They are said to be especially personable and continue to be very common show birds.
Despite the bird’s extraordinary height, not many chicken lovers like them.
10. Frizzle
The Frizzle is a breed of chicken with characteristic curled or frizzled plumage. While the frizzle gene can be seen in many breeds, such as the Pekin and Polish, the Frizzle is recognized as a distinct breed in several European countries and Australia. In the United States frizzled chickens are not considered a breed, and at shows are judged by the standards of the breed they belong to.
A funny-looking chicken with an even funnier name, the Frizzle developed from a mutation that makes the chicken’s feathers curve outward instead of lying flat like “normal” chickens.
See Also:
- Lists of Philippine Native Chicken Breeds
- Jackfruit Farming: How to Plant and Grow Langka
- Large White Pig Breed Profile and Characteristics
- How to Start a Gamefarm and Game Fowl Breeding Business
- Pig Breeding in the Philippines: Business Tips
Some of these chickens are beautiful!