Showing posts with label Cochin Craze. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cochin Craze. Show all posts

Cochin Chickens Part 2 - The Craze that Became a Mania

In Part One I discussed the strange history of the Cochin and how it came into the West. In this second part I am going to look at these birds' progress and influence once they got here.

Mottled Black Cochin Chick organically raised



As the breeder and author Lewis Wright expressed it:
'Cochins came in like giants upon the scene; they were seen and they conquered.'

A pair of Buff (Chamois) Cochins by J.W. Ludlow, an illustration for Wright's book.

The Game of Spin the Chicken

It was at the First Birmingham Cattle and Poultry Show of 10th December 1849 that the Great British Public amongst others, finally got to see the new Cochin or Pekin breed. Visitors went home with the idea that the Cochin could grow to an immense size, that the hen could lay several eggs a day and that the cock, whose crow was similar to the roar of a lion, could be kept in the house and make an exceptionally loving pet. 

All this coupled with the idea that breeding them would be a very profitable enterprise, drove the prices of the birds sky high creating a chicken form of Tulip Mania.
 
I can see that!

Chamois and Partridge Frizzle Cochin Chicks organically raised



After decades of disinterest, it suddenly became fashionable again for the Victorian public to attend poultry shows and to purchase and thus raise poultry. The first show in Birmingham was such a success that the following year's event took place in the brand new, purpose built 'Bingley Hall' and tens of thousands of visitors flocked to view the exciting new breeds.

As Wright attested in his 1890's Edition, in the chapter on Cochins:
'The introduction of these fowls...was a memorable event in the history of poultry; since they undoubtedly awakened a startling "mania" which was, calmly considered, one of the most curious phenomena of the nineteenth century, and which, after it had died away, left behind it an enduring interest which nothing has been able to destroy.'

The Cochin Bubble


From Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham:



Cuckoo Cochin Rooster/Cockerel organically raised"Fanciers give wonderfully strange prices sometimes. Cochin China fowls had but lately been introduced, and were therefore "the rage" in 1851-2. At the Poultry Show in the latter year a pair of these birds were sold for £30, and at a sale by auction afterwards two prize birds were knocked down at £40 each: it was said that the sellers crowed louder than the roosters"



At today's prices that would be £2,991 ($4,162) for the pair and  £3,989 ($5,551) each for the prize birds.

Cohin bantam hens, white, wheaten, lavender and a millefleurs cross


Millefleurs Cochin cross Bantam Hen organically raised
The 'Cochins Craze', as it was known in Britain was also directly responsible for the rise in the popularity of Poultry prints, books and dedicated magazines. Conversely, as seen in the Punch cartoon above, the craze also fuelled a host of satirical drawings and the usual attendant, reproving editorials in the British broadsheets.

In the USA a similar contagion  'Hen Fever' also known as 'The Fancy' swept the country. Enthusiasts and commercial breeders alike, on both sides of the Atlantic, waited eagerly at the docks as the fast clippers came in with a new cargo of Cochins. In the early days, before the prices began to rise, getting stock out of China was not that simple,  as the American breeder and author, George Pickering Burnham attested:
'As can well be understood, the mass of gentlemen or businessmen who go from the West to China possess neither the taste, the knowledge, or the inclination to concern themselves about looking up poultry in that far away land.... Secondly the ship-masters and sailors who go there, know little or nothing of the poultry (except to eat it when cooked).... Thus the latter class never trouble themselves to secure any particular style, shape, color or sized fowl.'
The difficulties in obtaining good specimens and in particular those that would stand the rigours of the voyage, which included typhoons, pirate attacks and being neglected and cooped up on shipboard for months, probably made the Cochin the magnificent creature it is today!

White Cochin Pekin Bantam Hen organically raised



The Cochin Craze continued to sweep through Britain and in 1853 a Cochin changed hands for the record price of £2,587 - today that would be around £188,000 ($260,481)!

Even the fertile eggs were selling like the proverbial 'hot cakes'. A March 1854 issue of The Poultry Chronicle advertised Prize White Cochin hatching eggs for £2 2s a dozen, at today's prices that is £180 ($253). If you think that is steep, then know that I recently paid £10 for two (non-exhibition) Tolbunt Polish hatching eggs and only one hatched - but she is a beauty!

Tolbunt Polish Hen organically raised

According to several sources the Cochin bubble burst in 1855. However, in the edition of his work published in 1912, Lewis Wright observed that a Cochin hen, hatched from an egg originating from his own exhibition stock, having won the cup at Yarmouth in 1872:
'...was pronounced by the judge the best he ever saw, and purchased by Mr Horace Lingwood for £20, the highest price given for a single hen up to that date since the early Cochin mania.'
(At today's prices:  £1,639 ($2,273).

Cochin Chicanery

Black Frizzled Cochin Cockerel/Rooster organically raised
With the feverish interest shown by the fanciers and a public whipped up into Cochin "mania" by the press, it was perhaps to be expected that fakery would also be on the rise. It was to become a  particular problem at competition level, where as we have seen above,  prize Cochins could command exceptional prices, even for their eggs. Fraud appeared in many forms at exhibition, from the clipping and dying of plumage to the plucking of imperfect feathers and the addition of fake ones, particularly sickles. This was rife in all kinds of exhibition birds but for the Cochin it was 'fluffing' that was a particular favourite amongst the unscrupulous breeders.

Fluffing

Partridge Frizzled Cochin Rooster/Cockerel organically raisedWright refers to Cochins as being valued by fanciers and judges alike; 'for their great globular masses of soft plumage'. He mentions three women of the same family who were in succession found guilty of and permanently banned from, exhibiting Cochins because their birds had been 'fluffed'.  Fluffing was a tedious and time-consuming practice but with the Cochin being judged and prized for the volume of fluff, the rewards were great. Fluffing entailed taking each feather and bending it backwards with the finger and  thumb or forceps and then taking the feather a little higher up and bending it again, in the opposite direction.

In a minor form, which was frowned upon but not judged as outright fraud, mild fluffing could be accomplished by working the feathers outwards and upwards with the hand whilst drying the bird after washing.

Here above 'Cafe-latte' and below 'Fluffy' demonstrate what a Cochin with naturally bent backwards or rather frizzled feathers looks like!

Black Frizzled Cochin Bantam Hen and Wheaten Chick organically raised


In Part Three I'll discuss my own experience in keeping Cochins over the past ten years, including their amazing versatility and ability to respond to new situations, including raising all kinds of chicks. Please also feel free to comment and or share this article.

Hope you enjoyed this piece, as with the previous one, it has taken me many weeks to research. If you would like to republish any of this material please do give me credit and I hope it will also inspire you to go on and read more about these fascinating birds, their unique history and influences on poultry keeping today.

All the very best,
Sue
© 2018 Sue Cross


RELATED ARTICLES

The Cochin Craze 3. Choosing Cochins for Your Garden

The Cochin like all ancient breeds are excellent foragers and quickly become a vital part of any garden, keeping down weeds and pests. And as not all of the Cochin Craze story was 'spin',..read more

The Cochin Craze 1 - A Story of Addiction

These fluffy bundles, which I have been raising for ten years have a unique and fascinatingly terrible history, involving bloody wars, tea, silver and above all opium. A three part article on  the chicken version of Tulip Mania and my own Cochin..read more
Polish Chickens Chamois and Golden Frizzled and Non-Frizzled.

Polish Crested - Beauty, Brains and Rusticity.

It's hard to believe that a creature which looks so frou-frou can be anything but ornamental and therefore totally unsuited to a backyard or smallholding but in the following article...read more

Frizzles for a Forest Garden Part 1

In some countries, such as here in France, Frizzles are often viewed as an individual breed rather than a form of feather mutation, which can occur across several races...read more

 


Frizzles for a Forest Garden 2 Behaviour & Emotions

Spike is a fine example of a Polish Frizzle and has also something which I believe  well illustrates the dilemma faced by the Frizzled bird...read more

 

References:

Available to read freely on-line and to download in various formats at the Internet Archive:

Hunter, A.F., 1904. The Asiatics Brahmas, Cochins and Langshans
Wright, L., 1890. The Illustrated Book of Poultry with Practical Schedules for Judging.
Wright, L., Lewer, S.H., 1912. The Illustrated Book of Poultry with Practical Schedules for Judging, (re-written).
Harman, T.T., 1885. Showell's dictionary of Birmingham. A history and guide ... containing thousands of dates and references to matters of interest connected with the past and present history of the town.
Burnham, G.P., 1874. The China Fowl. Shanghae, Cochin and "Brahma".
The Poultry Chronicle, 1854. A bound volume of the weekly magazine published by Bradbury and Evans.

Additional images from Pinterest thanks to:
etsy.com 

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The Cochin Craze. A Story of Addiction

The Cochin/Pekin is an ancient Asiatic breed and as the name suggests one of conflicting and confusing progenitor. Both names seem interchangeable and imply provenance from different countries. One being Imperial China and the other, Cochin China; the name given by early Portuguese traders to what is today known as Southern Vietnam. Delving into the history of this fluffy bundle brings to the surface a tale of bloody wars, tea, silver, looting and above all, opium.

the History of the Cochin craze - Chamois Cochin Chick


Even the dates concerning its entry into a world outside that of the Imperial Court seems sketchy, the London Illustrated News appears adamant in the date of 1843.  However, a certain consensus has it, that a form of Cochin China fowl, then known as Shanghai Chickens had been presented to Queen Victoria in the late 1830s early 40s by the Daoguang, 6th Emperor of the Quin Dynasty. This seems an unlikely contingent, being in and around the first period of the Opium Wars. However at various stages of these bloody and bitter conflicts, in which Britain finally forced China to accept opium in payment for goods, a semblance of peace was declared with a symbolic exchange of  'gifts'. Maybe it was at one of these affairs that the poultry exchanged hands.





History of the Cochin breed - Cuckoo Cochin Rooster
There has been much controversy as to the origin of these first Shanghais. Many 19th century poultry fanciers and experts argued over the fact that the drawing in the Illustrated London News (see above), entitled, 'her Majesty's Cochins' showed a clean-legged relatively lightly plumaged bird. Although proud of bearing and apparently with yellow legs, these fabulous fowls bore little resemblance to the majestic creatures with huge feathery feet we have come to know and love as Cochins. Furthermore, it was even suggested at the time, that the Queen's chickens were unknown in Cochin China.

In 1847, between the two Opium Wars and after the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, which also ceded the British the island of Hong Kong, Queen Victoria obtained the white version of what today is still known as the Cochin. She and other English poultry fanciers, importing black, white and chamois were able to do this by using one of the newly conceded 'Treaty Ports'. Although initially named Shanghais or even in some literature 'Shanghaes', possibly due to the port of exit, the name Cochin, for whatever reason was adopted.

White Cochin Juvenile Chicken

Above portrait photograph of one of our white Cochins; 'Snowy' at six months old and below at nine months with his brother 'Snowball' making a brave effort to cross the garden in deep snow.

White Cochin Pekin Roosters in the Snow


 

A Tangled Tale of Tea and Opium - Pekin and Pekingese



Left the first of the new high speed Opium Clippers (sails furled) 'Red Rover', lying of Fort William. And from  Lubbock's 'The China Clippers':
'From the very start the importation of opium into China was entirely against the decrees and wishes of its rulers, who knew only too well  the harm done by the drug to all who fall under its influence. And those enterprising British, American and Parsee firms who engaged in the opium traffic were nothing more or less than smugglers, smugglers indeed who showed greater daring and finer seamanship and made bigger profits than any the world had previously known.'

China required payment in silver for her exports of tea, silk and porcelain but the British, through war, imposed payment in opium. Drug manufacture by slave-labour in Bengal was a dirt cheap alternative to the precious metal. Opium was in fact illegal in Victorian Britain and China, using the drug  medicinally, required very little.

In France Cochins were/are known as Pekins and it is common knowledge that the first birds ever to reach the 'Hexagone' were in fact looted by French soldiers in October 1860. This was at the end of the Second Opium War, when the Old Summer Palace was firstly plundered and then finally burned to the ground on the 18th of the month.

We might have been taught to think of gold, silver and jewellery as 'spoils of war'. However, following on from the plundering of the Quin Emperor's chickens, Queen Victoria, in April 1861, became  the owner of the first ever Pekingese dog in the West. Making no secret about the way she had obtained the pup, she rather barefacedly, even for the 19th century, named her 'Looty'. The Pekingese was one of five pets belonging to the Lady Hešeri, Consort of the Daoguang Emperor, she had committed suicide on the 7th of October when his son, the Xianfeng Emperor and the rest of the court fled the palace. Her five dogs were found mourning around her body.

'Looty' above photographed in 1865 by William Bambridge


Hugh Piper writing in his Poultry Book in 1890 was straightforward in his view of the British Cochins' provenance:
'The Pekin, or Cochin Bantams, were taken from the Summer Palace at Pekin during the Chinese war, and brought to this country.'
In 2014 at a Hong Kong Sotheby's auction, a  Chinese businessman made the winning bid on a 'Chicken Cup'. Having paid the $36 million (plus costs), he was equally concise, pouring a little tea into it he drank and later observed: "Emperor Quinlong has used it, now I have used it....I just wanted to see how it felt."

In Part Two I'll discuss the role Cochins played in the West and how their exhibition to the  General Public brought about a complete change in the way poultry were viewed and 'valued' and created an unprecedented boom in prices and fraud!

Hope you enjoyed this piece it has taken me many weeks to research and in particular to sort the 'wheat from the chaff'. If you would like to republish any of this material please do give me credit and I hope it will also inspire you to go on and read more about these fascinating birds, their unique history and influences on poultry keeping today. Please also feel free to comment and/or share this article.

All the very best,
Sue
© 2018 Sue Cross


RELATED ARTICLES

The Cochin Craze 2. From Craze to Mania

'The introduction of these fowls...was a memorable event in the history of poultry; since they undoubtedly awakened a startling "mania" which was, calmly considered, one of the most curious phenomena of the nineteenth century'...read more

Polish Chickens Chamois and Golden Frizzled and Non-Frizzled.

Polish Crested - Beauty, Brains and Rusticity.

It's hard to believe that a creature which looks so frou-frou can be anything but ornamental and therefore totally unsuited to a backyard or smallholding but in the following article...read more

Frizzles for a Forest Garden Part 1

In some countries, such as here in France, Frizzles are often viewed as an individual breed rather than a form of feather mutation, which can occur across several races...read more

 


Frizzles for a Forest Garden 2 Behaviour & Emotions

Spike is a fine example of a Polish Frizzle and has also something which I believe  well illustrates the dilemma faced by the Frizzled bird...read more


FURTHER READING

Available freely to read on-line or download in various formats at The Internet Archive:
Wright, L., 1890. The Illustrated Book of Poultry with Practical Schedules for Judging, 
Wright, L., Lewer, S.H., 1912. The Illustrated Book of Poultry with Practical Schedules for Judging , (re-written)
Piper, H., 1871. Profitable and Ornamental Poultry, A Practical Guide
Lubbock, B., 1914. The China Clippers

Additional Photographs from Pinterest, thanks to:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org
ocw.mit.edc
2ndlook.wordpress.com
royalcollection.org.uk
blogs.wsj.com


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