Standard Varieties of Chickens:

La Fleche

La Fleche differs in character from the two other mentioned varieties of French poultry. Houdans are Crevecoeurs are more compactly built than La Fleche, the latter being tall and rather gaunt looking, and in style and character denoting the preponderance of Spanish blood. Their plumage is a rich, glossy black throughout. Their comb is peculiar to itself, being leaf, of moderate size, branching and antler like, somewhat like to horns pointing upward. They are extremely delicate constitution and difficult to raise. The flesh of this fowl is more delicate and juicy than any variety except the Game. It is a moderate layer of very large, white eggs, but by no means so good as the Spanish in this respect; it is as a table fowl that it claims superiority. It does not mature early - not nearly so early as the Houdans or the Crevecoeurs.

The standard weight of cocks is 8 ½ pounds (3.9 kg); hens, 7 ½ pounds (3.4 kg); cockerels, 7 ½ pounds (3.4 kg); and pullets, 6 ½ pounds (2.9 kg).

FOR FURTHER READING...

The first image below comes from the Oklahoma State University Department of Animal Science's Poultry Breeds pages. The second image is from the FeatherSite, "an on-line zoological garden of domestic poultry". The La Fleche page at Oklahoma and the La Fleche page at FeatherSite contain further information about this breed's history and more images of these fowl. Clicking on each image takes you to the page specifically about that particular variety.

Image Credits (from left to right): Copyright © 1996, Oklahoma State University Board of Regents; Courtesy of Jan Ubels

Please note: These links point to pages that are being served off of the Oklahoma State University's web server and off the cyborganic.net web server, which are not part of the Chickscope project. Because of this, the pages may be missing or corrupted, and control of this is generally out of the hands of the Chickscope development team.

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