The Burmese or Burmese Bantam is a British

breed A breed is a specific group of domestic animals having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species. In literature, there exist several slig ...

of bantam chicken. It apparently originated in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

, formerly Burma, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. By the time of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

it was thought to be extinct. Some surviving individuals were discovered in the 1970s and were bred with white Booted Bantams to recreate the breed.

History

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

mentions the Burmese Bantam in his ''

Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication ''The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication'' is a book by Charles Darwin that was first published in January 1868. A large proportion of the book contains detailed information on the domestication of animals and plants but it al ...

'' of 1868. According to the

Poultry Club of Great Britain The Poultry Club of Great Britain is a registered charity founded in 1877. Its stated purpose is to "safeguard the interests of all pure and traditional breeds of poultry including chickens, bantams, ducks, geese and turkeys". The club mai ...

the Burmese derives from birds sent to the United Kingdom from Burma in the 1880s by an officer in the British Army.

William Flamank Entwisle William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Eng ...

received one of these birds, apparently a carrier of the

creeper gene Creeper chickens are characterised by abnormally short legs, so short that the body is carried a few centimetres from the ground. This chondrodystrophy (dwarfism) is caused by a recessive lethal allele, ''Cp''. A number of breeds display the ...

, and bred from it. By the beginning of the

the breed was believed to be extinct. In 1970 some were given to Andrew Sheppy, who had established the

Rare Poultry Society The Rare Poultry Society, established in 1969, is a British breed club devoted to the protection and promotion of rare poultry breeds, which the Society defines as breeds that do not have their own breed club in the United Kingdom. The society's ...

. He bred them with white Booted Bantams and successfully re-established the breed. An attempt has been made in Holland to re-create the Burmese by

cross-breeding A crossbreed is an organism with purebred parents of two different breeds, varieties, or populations. ''Crossbreeding'', sometimes called "designer crossbreeding", is the process of breeding such an organism, While crossbreeding is used to main ...

other bantams, but the results do not closely resemble the birds shown in historic drawings by

Harrison Weir Harrison William Weir (5 May 18243 January 1906), known as "The Father of the Cat Fancy", was a British artist. He organised the first cat show in England, at the Crystal Palace, London, in July 1871. He and his brother, John Jenner Weir, b ...

and J.W. Ludlow of the original stock.

Characteristics

The Burmese resembles the Booted Bantam, but is smaller and lower to the ground; it has a small crest. The legs are short, with heavy feathering. The

comb A comb is a tool consisting of a shaft that holds a row of teeth for pulling through the hair to clean, untangle, or style it. Combs have been used since prehistoric times, having been discovered in very refined forms from settlements dating ba ...

is single, the earlobes are small and the wattles drooping and fairly long. Only one

colour Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...

is recognised by the

: the white. The Dutch re-creation is black.

References

{{True bantams Chicken breeds Bantam chicken breeds Animal breeds on the RBST Watchlist