The Potchefstroom Koekoek: An old-fashioned, dual-purpose bird

Potchefstroom Koekoeks

As small-scale, urban, organic vegetable gardeners, we have recently invested in Potchefstroom Koekoeks, an old-fashioned, dual-purpose bird bred specifically for South African conditions. 

But the question is: why? 

The answer is simple: Who doesn't want to eat bright orange yolks? (As to how and why bright orange yolks are so good for you, keep on reading :-)

Bright orange yolks indicate your free-range birds are eating a variety of leafy greens

We got the Potchefstroom Koekoeks as tiny chicks, but a few days old, and my husband had to drive up specially to Gauteng to fetch them. We kept them inside until they were finally big enough to be released, since they needed to be kept in a small room, under infra-red lights, since otherwise the cold would have killed them.  

So, why did we choose the Potchefstroom Koekoek? 

Well, I was looking for an excellent dual-purpose chicken suitable for a subsistence farmer. 

This requires that any chicken chosen satisfy a number of, at times, conflicting characteristics. For instance, the world standard in egg-laying is the Leghorn, however, though they are prolific layers, they are not at all broody. Hence, if you are a subsistence farmer, you want a chicken that lays enough eggs, but is also sufficiently broody that they can also sit on eggs too, hatch them and look after them for those first crucial weeks when they need to spend most of their time huddling warmly under mother's wings.

You want a chicken that is healthy and happy and able to scratch around in the compost heap, catching worms and be delighted with the weekly treat of searching the vegetable garden for noo-noos, fresh leafy greens and cherry tomatoes.

In other words, I was looking for an old-fashioned kind of farm chicken, and one, moreover, that is resilient in terms of South African conditions and capable of foraging for itself. Although we do feed them, of course, it's just - those delightful orange yolks come from chickens eating a wide variety of food stuffs, particularly leafy greens. After all, who wants to eat corn, and only corn, all day and every day?  

See if you can spot the difference between shop-bought and home-laid eggs:

Bright orange yolks from the free-range bantams compared to larger, store-bought yellow yolks from chickens

The small, orange yolks come from the bantams in our yard, which scratch around in the compost heap and eat fresh leafy greens from their weekly treat of an outing in the monkey-proof vegetable cage, where they work to keep the snail population down.

Many of the chickens bred solely for meat production, for instance, are essentially genetic misfits, and though they grow rapidly, even excessively, they are practically useless, and suffer from heart and musculaskeletal problems. Ever since we raised a couple of "Rainbow Chickens" courtesy of the chicks hatching out in my son's classroom as an experiment, I haven't been able to buy one at the supermarket. 

Our large "Rainbow Chickens" variety, which were effectively useless as a chicken

Even left to grow up free-range they remain clumsy, awkward, unhealthy juvenile-like birds and watching them waddle around the garden, burdened by a body grown too large, too quickly, without any kind of medication whatsoever, was actually quite distressing. 

Hence, after that little experiment, we decided to go search for and find an old-fashioned farm bird. 

Research led me to the Potchefstroom Koekoek (or "Cuckoo", named for the characteristic barred black-and-white plumage), which was bred by the late Chris Marais who worked at the Veterinary College in Potchefstroom in the 1950s. He sought to breed a dual-purpose bird that was specifically suited to subsistence farmers in South Africa. 

However, the reason for our choice of this particular chicken, as opposed to other indigenous varieties such as the Venda, Ovamba and Naked Neck, is grounded in this research published in 2010 by Grobbelaar, Sutherland and Molalakgotla (http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i1353t/i1353t04.pdf)

If you are wanting to be somewhat self-sufficient as a small-scale, albeit urban farmer, these are the issues:

"These farmers want to keep a chicken that can produce sufficient meat and eggs, become broody and hatch their own chickens to make the owner independent in egg and white meat production. Although they raise these chickens, the farmers need a breed with genetic traits for the ability to produce an optimum number of eggs and meat. These chickens must also be able to produce eggs, survive and hatch chickens under extensive conditions."

Though the other indigenous South African breeds considered in this long-term study proved as resilient in terms of mortality, the Potchefstroom Koekoek proved itself superior from an egg production point of view - though not at all on a par with the Leghorn.

Hence, since we wanted to harvest our own eggs, all organic and orange, the Koekoek was the obvious choice

It also didn't harm that the breed is a particularly handsome one. 

Young Koekoeks, just released

The Potchefstroom Koekoek has recently proved itself very popular (possibly off the back of the above research paper). So much so that, although my husband was hoping to pick up older chickens, the hatcher had just sold every last chicken to a non-profit operating in Swaziland. Hence, he came back with some 2 day and some 5 day old chicks. 

As a result, we have had to get up-to-speed in chicken raising, and lost two babies to the cold, after which we had to install infra-red lights and the like inside the house. 

The good news is, unlike the bantams, these are now used to us, and suffer being picked up readily. Also, they will produce larger eggs, unlike the bantams (who we mainly bought to keep the snail population in our organic monkey-proof cage down).

Bantam hen and chicks

Here is Bethany with Tom, the largest of the lot, looking down on our bantam rooster, which is suitably concern at this influx of strangers into what was hitherto his domain.

Bethany and Tom looking down at the bantam cock

It's just another few months to egg-laying by the hens; I can't wait.