Red Jungle Fowl – Gallus gallus
Red Jungle Fowl as know as Gallus gallus is a medium-sized birds with about 78 cm length and the female is smaller about 46 cm length. The birds has soft neck feathers with golden brown and yellow. Their Face is light red, with brown iris, and dark green back and saddle feathers.
The Birds has perfect red comb and wattles and beautiful tail feather about 14 to 16 glossy black green color feathers tail. Grey legs and very sharp spurs. The Female has shorter feathers, dark yellow color and brown pattern with dark spots.
This species is ancestral to the all domestic chicken breed, with some hybridization with the grey junglefowl. The red junglefowl was first domesticated at least five thousand years ago in Asia, then taken around the world, and the domestic form is kept globally as a very productive food source of both meat and eggs.
Spread and Range
The Red Jungle Fowl are widespread in tropical forests in the Asian continent, from the Himalayas, China, Southeast Asia, to Sumatra and Java. The range of the wild form stretches from South India (where it has almost certainly been diluted with cross breeding from domestic breeds) eastwards across southern China and into Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia.
Sub Species
There are five subspecies spread dominates in certain locations of Red Jungle fowl a.k.a Gallus Gallus
- gallus (Indochina),
- spadiceus (Myanmar),
- bankiva (Java),
- murghi (India),
- jabouille (Vietnam).
However, there are currently new sub-species developed by Gallus gallus domesticus and sub-species developing in the Philippines, Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia namely Gallus gallus gallina, gallus gallus micronesia and Gallus gallus philippenisis.
In Indonesia there are two subspecies of Gallus gallus, namely as Gallus gallus spadiceus originating from northern Sumatra, and Gallus gallus bankiva originating from southern Sumatra, Java and Bali.
Behaviours
Adult birds and juvenile are living grouped with a few members of males and females. In the morning the birds went to go out for looking some food and go down to the ground. The Red Jungle Fowl diet consists a variety of grains, grass and leaves, insects and various of bugs.
The female is laying about 5 or 6 eggs in season and broody the eggs for about 21 days. The eggs is smaller and has cream or brown colored eggs . Red jungle baby chicks are taken care of by both of their parents. Chicks can fly at the age of one week. Red Jungle Fowl is believed to be the ancestor of all chicken breed in the world.