History of the Brahma Chicken

From Chinese port imports to America's leading meat breed

The Brahma's story is, in the words of the Wikipedia summary of the breed, "controversial and confusing." The birds were developed in the United States, but from stock that arrived from Asia under many different names, during a speculative boom in fancy poultry. What follows is the version supported by the sources listed below.

Imports through Shanghai

According to The Livestock Conservancy, an 1843 treaty opened Chinese ports to trade and made many local chicken types available to Western buyers. Among them were very large fowl with feathered shanks and toes from around Shanghai. In America these were often simply called "Shanghai" birds. The Brahma was developed in the US from these very large Chinese imports.

The same Shanghai stock also gave rise to the breed now known as the Cochin. What separates the two, according to The Livestock Conservancy, is the head and comb: the Brahma's broad skull, overhanging "beetle brow" and small pea comb.

The Chittagong contribution

Those head and comb traits are generally credited to crosses with Chittagong fowl — birds of Malay type named for the port of Chittagong in eastern Bengal, now Bangladesh. The Livestock Conservancy says Chittagongs were used "to a small degree." Wikipedia describes the likely source as Grey Chittagong birds. A University of Arkansas summary adds that interest in the breed began around 1846–1847 after birds were found on a vessel from Calcutta in New York harbor.

A dozen names, then one

With no written standards, poultry associations or registries yet in existence, the same kind of bird was sold under at least twelve names. Farm and Dairy lists some of them: Chittagongs, Gray Shanghais and Brahma Pootras. Wikipedia records that poultry judges meeting in Boston in 1852 agreed on "Brahmapootra," a reference to the Brahmaputra River, which later shortened to "Brahma." The Livestock Conservancy credits T.B. Miner, publisher of The Northern Farmer, with shortening the name to "Brahma" in 1853 or 1854.

The "hen fever"

The Brahma and the Cochin arrived in the middle of a poultry craze in both the United States and Britain around 1850, known as the "hen fever." One of its best-known participants was the Boston dealer George P. Burnham, who in 1855 published The History of the Hen Fever: A Humorous Record. Burnham described the mania as an "inexplicable humbug" that swept through nearly every class of society in the late 1840s and early 1850s, with buyers paying inflated prices for fancy fowl — and he admitted he had profited from it. He also recorded the first exhibition of fancy poultry, held at the Public Garden in Boston in November 1849.

In December 1852 Burnham shipped nine of his birds — then called "Gray Shanghaes" — to Queen Victoria, the first export of the type to England. The Livestock Conservancy reports that prices rose afterwards from $12–15 a pair to $100–150.

Light and Dark

The Light Brahma was the original variety. The Dark Brahma was developed by English breeders from Burnham's stock and later shipped back to America; The Livestock Conservancy says it originally ran about a pound lighter than the Light. The Buff appeared from time to time from the beginning but was not standardized until much later.

Into the Standard: 1874

The American Poultry Association was founded in 1873, and its first standard — adopted at a meeting in Buffalo, New York, on January 15, 1874, and originally called the Standard of Excellence — was published that year. Light and Dark Brahmas were both included in that first edition. The name was changed to the Standard of Perfection in 1888. In Britain, both varieties had already appeared in the first Standard of Excellence of the Poultry Club of Great Britain in 1865, according to Wikipedia.

Later milestones, from The Livestock Conservancy and the University of Arkansas summary:

America's meat bird

From the mid-1850s until about 1930, the Brahma was the leading meat breed in the United States. The Livestock Conservancy notes that broilers were taken at 8–10 weeks, roasters at about eight months, and that cockerels stayed tender up to 12–13 months, competing with capons. Oklahoma State University adds that much of the breed's development took place between 1850 and 1890, and that its slow growth eventually kept it out of commercial production.

Conservation today

The Brahma was long on The Livestock Conservancy's priority list of heritage breeds. In 2023 it graduated from that list, a sign that its numbers have recovered.

Sources