hope this will be educational for everyone interested in Ayam Cemani.
Last night I had an interesting conversation with a nice Dutch gentleman who introduced first Ayam Cemani in Europe many years ago. I won't name this person here but if you look into Wikipedia you will know who I am talking about.
We ended up exchanging our opinions and breeding/hatching experience.
Many people who try to breed Ayam Cemani face similar problems at some point. These could be development of red combs/wattles/face, white skin/toes/toenails/feather, significant difference in size of chicks and mortality rates during and after incubation.
Us, breeders, are all striving for perfection in our birds. Well, we all have this same problem with Ayam Cemani then. Let me point out what it is.
Firstly, there is a need to point out that
pure Ayam Cemani birds don’t always produce 100% black chicks. In fact, you
must be very lucky to find a 100% black chick. During the 17 years of breeding experience the Dutch breeder has only seen 1 pure black chick with black tongue. Another friend of mine who breeds Indonesian line has seen only 2 in his lifetime. So to answer the question if the black tongue exists the answer is, yes it does BUT… do we really want to go this far to end up with a chicken that is all black inside out?
Apparently,
an intense pigmentation in embryos can lead to blockage of capillary veins and high mortality. That's why it is important that t
he pigmentation must be balanced.The line that was almost 100% black resulted in hatching rate dropping to below 10% and it was not caused by the cockerel not doing his job! In such lines
many embryonic death, fail to hatch, or very slow development are often found as the organs get clogged with pigment.
On the other hand very late hatchings tended to be the most “off colour”, sometimes even resulting in almost black and white chicks. This is something we both experienced within our lines. Searching for more scientific explanation I did further reading on this problem to confirm what I was suspecting, that imbalance of some amino acids inside an egg can cause such embryonic abnormalities. So again, this is nothing to do with the parent birds not being of good enough standard.
White toes and soles indicate less intensive pigmentation. Once mature these birds will get purple faces. However, don’t confuse purple faces with red faces/combs/wattles! Purple faces happen in Ayam Cemani and obviously they are not desired trait but clear red colour indicates that the line may not be pure and it could have been crossed with another breed in earlier generations.
I feel I cannot argue with someone who has got 17 years of experience breeding Ayam Cemani and previously experienced them in their origin country. Both of us have hatched Ayams directly from Indonesian lines and compared results. We both were quite surprised to see that many similarities!
An Ayam with only one 1 fibro is still pure ayam, The point in here is that in the situation where two birds with 2 fibro genes mate, the offspring mortality increases. This is why it is so rare to find a perfect black bird. All in nature has to balance to work properly and in this case it seems like
too much fibro is against natural processes (I hope you know what I mean). Saying that, the standard of AC is a pure black colour, therefore if someone manages to breed such a bird will be very lucky as the value of this bird would be "priceless".
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