Exhibition on The Gamecock Codex

Malay

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2026-06-01

The Malay is the tallest of all gamefowl breeds — a strange, almost reptilian bird with a long S-curved neck, a hawk-billed head set low on the shoulders, prominent shoulder hump, and legs that carry the body almost a metre off the ground. It was one of the first Asian breeds known in Europe and was the model from which Buffon and Aldrovandi drew their natural-history descriptions in the seventeenth century.

Modern Game

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2026-06-01

The Modern Game is the bird of the exhibition hall — bred, since about 1850, for type alone. Where the Old English Game retains the working shape of the cockpit bird, the Modern Game has been stretched, refined, exaggerated, and polished into a creature of show-bench perfection: tall, slim, long-legged, tight-feathered, narrow-bodied, fierce of eye, with a head held high and a tail carried low.

Phoenix

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2026-06-01

The Phoenix is the long-tail fowl of the European show pen — bred from imported Japanese Onagadori stock in the late nineteenth century and developed into a bird of extraordinary tail length, though not (as is often claimed) of true non-moulting tail growth.

Sumatra

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2026-06-01

The Sumatra is a long-tailed, beetle-black gamefowl of the Indonesian island that gives it its name — a bird of almost pheasant-like carriage, kept today for exhibition and as one of the most striking of the long-crower breeds. It is the Western showman’s nearest approach to the wild Gallus varius of Java, although it is descended in fact from fighting stock of Sumatra rather than from any wild species.

Yokohama

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2026-06-01

The Yokohama is the European cousin of the Japanese Minohiki (蓑引き, “saddle-drooping”) — a long-tailed gamefowl developed in the late nineteenth century by German fanciers from imported Japanese stock.

The Cock of Tomorrow

Tue, 01 Jan 1850 00:00:00 +0000

The first great poultry shows (Birmingham 1847, Crystal Palace 1848) launch the Modern Game — a bird bred for type alone, the first show-bench breed developed purely for the visual eye.