Delaware Chicken

Delaware Chickens were the primary meat bird breed of the United States from the early 1900s to 1970s until being replaced with more modern meat bird breeds. Today, they remain a popular heritage breed for both laying and eating.

General
The Delaware Chicken(Sometimes just called Delaware's) are commonly found and purchased in the United States and other nearby areas, used for both laying and meat purposes.

Though they are considered a vulnerable breed, they are often sold both locally and commercially across the United States.

Behavior
Delaware Chickens are normally slow, relaxed and submissive due to their origin of being a meat bird chicken, but can have many behaviors like most chicken breeds depending on the specific chicken and how it is raised. They can fly to an extent if their wings have not been clipped, but are not decent flyers.

Appearance
Delaware Chickens have bright white soft feathers with speckles and spots of black feathers near the under-wings, neck and tail. They are quite heavy and fatty compared to other similar breeds due to their meat heritage, making them easy to spot from a distant.

Males have extremely large crows and waddles, and both genders have small yellowish beaks.

History
The Delaware Chicken was first developed in the US State of Delaware to be used as a broiler chicken around the year 1940 by George Ellis and slowly became one of the staple meat chickens of the entire United States due to their fatty nature and easily removed feathers.

Delaware's became less popular as commercial chickens as more selected breeds became accessible for meat and the Delaware chickens slowly lost popularity across the commercial market of the United States.

Today, they remain a popular heritage breed for both laying and meat but like much, if any, commercial use for meat by 2021.

Bantam
Delaware Chickens have a much less common Bantam variant, but normally need to specially ordered and are not normally sold in most farming franchises such as Tractor Supply.