The Scots Dumpy is a traditional Scottish

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 ...

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

. It is characterised by very short legs, so short that the body is a few centimetres from the ground; as in other breeds of creeper chicken, this

chondrodystrophy Chondrodystrophy (literally, "cartilage maldevelopment") refers to a skeletal disorder caused by one of myriad genetic mutations that can affect the development of cartilage. As a very general term, it is only used in the medical literature when ...

is caused by a recessive lethal allele. The Dumpy has at times been known by other names, among them Bakie, Corlaigh, Crawler, Creeper and Stumpy. There are both standard-sized and bantam Scots Dumpies. It is one of two

Scottish breeds This is a list of domesticated animal breeds originating from Scotland. To be considered domesticated, a population of animals must have their behaviour, life cycle, or physiology systemically altered as a result of being under human control for ...

of chicken, the other being the

Scots Grey The Scots Grey is a dual-purpose breed of domestic chicken originating in Scotland, where it has been bred for more than two hundred years. It was formerly known as the Scotch Grey and until about 1930 was popular in Scotland. It is on the "Nati ...

History

The Scots Dumpy is a traditional Scottish breed; short-legged birds of this type have been bred in Scotland for more than two centuries. Some were introduced to England in the mid-nineteenth century, and were first shown at the Metropolitan Poultry Exhibition in

Baker Street Baker Street is a street in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster in London. It is named after builder William Baker, who laid out the street in the 18th century. The street is most famous for its connection to the fictional detec ...

in London in 1852. In 1854 John Fairlie of

Cheveley Park The village of Cheveley is situated in the county of Cambridgeshire and lies about four miles east-south-east of the market town of Newmarket. The population of the civil parish was 1,990 at the 2011 Census. Cheveley falls within the local g ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...

showed some at the Cheltenham Poultry Show in

Cheltenham Cheltenham (), also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort, following the discovery of mineral s ...

. It later became one of the rarest British breeds. In 1975 a search for surviving stock in Scotland was unsuccessful. Two years later a dozen birds were imported from Kenya, descendants of a small flock taken there in 1902 in the

dowry A dowry is a payment, such as property or money, paid by the bride's family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage. Dowry contrasts with the related concepts of bride price and dower. While bride price or bride service is a payment b ...

of Violet Mabel Carnegie, and used to re-constitute the breed. In 2009 it was listed by the

Rare Breeds Survival Trust The Rare Breeds Survival Trust is a conservation charity whose purpose is to secure the continued existence and viability of the native farm animal genetic resources (FAnGR) of the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1973 by Joe Henson to prese ...

as "at risk", the lowest of the four levels of endangerment the RBST assigned to poultry at that time.

Characteristics

There is no set

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 ...

for the Scots Dumpy, which is usually cuckoo, black or white; the

breed standard In animal husbandry or animal fancy, a breed standard is a description of the characteristics of a hypothetical or ideal example of a breed. The description may include physical or morphological detail, genetic criteria, or criteria of athletic ...

allows any colour standardised in other breeds. 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 and bright red. The ear-lobes are small, the

wattle Wattle or wattles may refer to: Plants *''Acacia sensu lato'', polyphyletic genus of plants commonly known as wattle, especially in Australia and South Africa **''Acacia'', large genus of shrubs and trees, native to Australasia **Black wattle, c ...

s of medium size; they and the face are also bright red. The eyes are red in the white and cuckoo varieties, dark in the black. The legs are abnormally short, the shanks no longer than , so the birds have an unusual waddling or swimming gait. They are otherwise normal in all respects, with a long heavy low-set body, deep breast, broad back, and well-arched tail. They have four toes.

Use

Scots Dumpy hens lay about 180 white or cream-coloured eggs per year. They are good sitters, and have been used to hatch clutches of

game-bird Galliformes is an order of heavy-bodied ground-feeding birds that includes turkeys, chickens, quail, and other landfowl. Gallinaceous birds, as they are called, are important in their ecosystems as seed dispersers and predators, and are often ...

eggs.

Notes

References

{{Scottish animal breeds Chicken breeds originating in Scotland Chicken breeds originating in the United Kingdom Animal breeds on the RBST Watchlist Chicken breeds Creeper chickens