On Tuesday we wrote about the Red junglefowl, the wild ancestor of the domestic chicken. To progress further with this Stendhalian color theme, here is a human-made chicken, crafted by means of artificial selection over the centuries—the Ayam Cemani—the back chickens of Java. These amazing birds are all black. I mean they are really black…so exceedingly black they make Kerry James Marshall weep with aesthetic envy.
Not only do Ayam Cemani chickens have black feathers, black faces, black beaks, and black wattles, their very organs are black. Even their bones are as black as India ink. It would be downright disconcerting… if they didn’t wear it so stylishly.
The birds’ black color is a sort of reverse of albinism—the Ayam Cemani chickens have a surfeit of pigment. This is genetic condition is known as fibromelanosis. For generations and generations farmers have selected it until they have produced this rooster who looks like he stepped into the barnyard from the event horizon of a black hole.
Yet the Ayam Cemani is not completely black…they have red blood and they lay cream colored eggs (although they are unreliable sitters, so without fashionistas looking after the survival of the breed, they might vanish real fast). Speaking of which, why did the Javans collectively make such a crazy striking animal? The internet says that the chickens are used for ceremonial purposes and for meals, but it looks like an amazing work of intergenerational conceptual art to me. If you want you can get some for yourself, but unless you are headed to Java, they are rare and cost thousands of dollars in the United States (if you can find a seller). It looks like it might be money well spent though. These are stunning roosters. Let’s hope the year of the fire rooster is as stylish as they are (but maybe not quite so dark).
ferrebeekeeper 
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February 3, 2017 at 2:32 AM
paginesparse
These guys (or rather gals) were all over the grocery stores in Shanghai, so they must export. I never had the courage to buy one, in part because in China when you buy a whole chicken, although it is almost always plucked, it has the head and feet still on, so it sort of felt like a devil-bird staring deadly into one’s soul. This feeling was amplified by their preternatural blackness. Unrelated: the best death-metal band name in this post: Black Bones.
February 3, 2017 at 11:17 AM
Mom
Some of the chicken catalogs carry a breed called the Sumatran which appears very similar to the Ayam Cemani. Maybe a version of it sold in the US.
February 4, 2017 at 11:59 AM
Beatrix
Hmmm……black goats are said to taste better that white or brown goats here in Nepal. In fact they cost more here too. Maybe black chickens taste better too?