The Potch Koekoek
The Potch Koekoek is a South African breed of chicken developed in the 1960’s at the Potchefstroom Agricultural College in the city of Potchefstroom by Chris Marais. It was developed by cross breeding a number of other breeds like Black Australorp, White Leghorn, and Barred Plymouth Rock to obtain specific characteristics of each, making the resulting breed more suitable to Southern African conditions.
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The breed was intended as a dual purpose, free-ranging chicken with laying capabilities as well as a large structure for meat production.
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Pure Koekoeks have a black-and-white barred appearance, with the chicks sexable soon after hatching due to distinct sex markings. Potch Koekoeks maintain good egg production even with poor quality or insufficient feeding.
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The Potch Koekoek was bred at the Potchefstroom Agricultural College during the 1960’s by a researcher named Chris Marais. This breed is a composite of the White Leghorn, Black Australorp and Barred Plymouth Rock. This breed can therefore be considered as a locally developed breed. The name Koekoek refers to the barred color pattern of the birds.
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Initially, the Black Australorps were crossed with the White Leghorn hens. The first generation hens and cocks were then mated with each other. Some of the progeny from this showed a striped plumage. The hens with the striped plumage were then crossed with Plymouth Rock cocks.
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The progeny with yellow skin was then selected. The Potch Koekoek cocks were then crossed with the Black Australorp hens. The crossing was done in order to ensure as much Black Australorp blood as possible in the progeny. With time, only yellow skin cocks were used and the breeding was continued until all the progeny had only the yellow skin and striped feather color.
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Most of the laying hens that were available for egg production during the developmental period of the Potch Koekoek laid white shelled eggs. The consumer, however, preferred brown shelled eggs. Therefore, the Potch Koekoek was specifically developed for the following production traits: the hens should lay a brown shelled egg with an average weight of 55.7 g and the carcass should be attractive with a deep yellow colored skin.
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The Potch Koekoek cocks and culled hens are used for meat production. Today the meat of this breed is still very popular among local communities and is preferred to that of the commercial broiler hybrids. The Koekoek’s color pattern is a sex-linked gene that is very useful for color sexing in cross-breeding for egg-producing types of hens used in medium input production systems. This breed is very popular among rural farmers in South Africa and neighboring countries for egg and meat production as well as their ability to hatch their own offspring.
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The Potch Koekoek is specifically suited for South African conditions. It is a truly indigenous South African bird with bright yellow yolks. It is a dual-purpose bird that is highly suited for free-range conditions. It lays enough eggs and is also sufficiently broody.
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The Potch Koekoek is a happy and active chicken, a great forager. It will scratch around and catch the worms and also eats a variety of greens. Thanks to their varied diets from intensive foraging, they produce some of the richest egg yolks, very delightful orange yolks. The large brown-shelled eggs and their yellow meat is very delicious! A study by FAO found that it performs better than all of the other indigenous chickens in South Africa.
