The Houdan Chicken is an old French breed. When imported to England in about 1850 it was more popularly known as the Normandy – presumably this being easier to pronounce than any Cockney version of the correct name in the London markets!

Although they are a large bird, it seems they were bred primarily as a dual-breed, and not just for their eggs. At present they are bred in a limited number of varieties, black mottled, white and lavender. At least one website entry lists them as ‘critical’ in the endangered bracket.

I spoke with Mark Goldby, who with his wife Fiona are one of very few breeders of Houdans in the upper North Island. They have been breeding chickens for the last seven years, and Houdans for four. “I had chickens when I was a child, and we became concerned that older breeds were dying out as a result of neglect,” Mark explained to me.

“The problem is relatively simple – ‘commercial’ breeds of chicken can be raised in around 45 days. My Houdans will take from 16 to 18 weeks to reach maturity, and in this fast moving world that is no good for the supermarkets. We’ve never actually eaten one of ours, but they were raised by the French, and I’ve seen references to a very fine grained flesh – and going back to the 1770s.”

In New Zealand the Houdan is classified as a light breed – which it probably wasn’t intended to be originally. There are references to the Roosters reaching around 4kg. “We may have the problem in New Zealand of too small a Gene pool,” Mark said.

“It is not an uncommon problem among breeders of any species, and if you have the lines bred too close together, you start to loose the characteristics for which they were bred. We’ve been very lucky here in that in four seasons my pullets have always increased. In other words each generation has got bigger.

“We hope to experiment with this in the future, but if you breed from the same line in different parts of the country, they seem to develop different strengths. If you keep breeding the best, you can bring the line back together in a few years. We know of someone in the north of the country who regularly swaps his Wyandottes with a breeder in the south, and they have never introduced a new line. It does however take skill to select the best qualities in each line.”

Curiously, Mark has a theory about the Polish chicken, from which the Houdan came. “I believed they may have come from Russia,” he told me. “And I think the head feathering

had a purpose too. They don’t have crests as such, but in a cold Russian winter a lot of extra feathers up top may have made all the difference to survival. Also, after cock-fighting was outlawed, breeding chickens became a rich man’s game. They began to be bred for their looks and not their fighting abilities, which resulted in a huge number of breeds being intermingled. The Houdan and the Polish may have benefited from that.”

Mark and Fiona have found their Houdans to be very good layers – producing roughly a size 6 egg, and quite prolific. “Of 5-6 breeding hens last season we regularly got 4-5 eggs each day. They also have quite a strong maternal instinct. They are reasonable foragers but their top notch can be a problem – firstly it impairs their field of vision, and secondly it can get very mucky. It is best to have a shallow feeding bowl to avoid them getting it wet.”

(Photos by Diane Kelly.)