• Cherry Creek Canadians • The Canadian Horse •

Chantecler Chickens

Another little known icon of Canadian agriculture and heritage, is the Chantecler chicken.  This rare breed was also developed in Canada and thus is uniquely adapted to our climatic conditions.  It was developed in the early 1900’s by a monk named brother Wilfrid, who lived in Oka QC.  This unique and very attractive dual purpose chicken breed, declared a “heritage” breed of QC by their parliament, is little known by the rest of Canada.  It is considered a rare breed of “critical” status by both Rare Breeds Canada, and the American Livestock Conservancy.

Having helped to do our part with the conservation of the Canadian Horse, I felt it time to turn our attention to another little known, and rapidly disappearing Canadian developed breed – the Chantecler chicken.  This was NOT met by enthusiasm by Jim who for years always swore “there will never be a chicken on this place as long as I am here”!  After some persuasion, he was finally convinced that we would be doing our part to help conserve a rare breed, in addition to producing our own home raised, organic chickens and eggs.  He finally relented, so it was time to start finding our chickens.  Not an easy task as it turned out!

 Finding these chickens anywhere in western Canada proved to be an impossible task.  Since the majority of Chanteclers still remain in QC today, that is ultimately where we decided to obtain our stock from.  So, while in QC at the 2005 Canadian Horse Association AGM, I managed to obtain some fertilized Chantecler chicken eggs.  We were able to get these from a variety of sources: the majority of them coming from Eric Rivard of Preservation Poultry in Granby QC, with several more coming from our Canadian Horse friends who also happened to have Chanteclers too.

Bringing these eggs back home to BC also proved to be quite the adventure!  Since I had flown to QC, I had to bring them back to Kamloops with me in a carry on bag on the plane.  Talking my way through airport security in QC was an adventure to say the least!  Picture me (with my almost non-existent French skills) trying to convince the French speaking security staff that they could NOT xray my eggs as it would damage them.  I was clutching my bag of eggs and they were tugging on it too.  I am sure they thought I was some sort of lunatic!  Once they figured out that I was bringing Quebec's heritage chicken breed all the way back to BC, they became very obliging. In the end, they didn’t xray them and agreed to only hand check them.  As I was leaving with my bag of eggs safely in my grasp, they flapped their arms up and down while “cheeping” aloud, congratulated me on becoming an “eleveur de poulet Chantecler”, and I was on my way.  

After borrowing an incubator from a friend, we managed to hatch 75% of the eggs out.  Needless to say, this was great fun.  We learned how to candle the eggs, and got to follow all the various stages of development.  Once those cute little balls of fluff emerged, we were both hooked!   Needless to say, Jim the previously “confirmed chicken hater” is now completely enthralled with his flock of “girls”, and can hardly wait to go out each day to see how many eggs they have left for him.

 We have both the white and partridge varieties.  We can definitely attest to the accuracy of the comment found on the ALBC site: “The breed is noted for being calm, gentle, and personable” as this certainly describes all the members of our little flock, to a “T”.

Rather than my “re-inventing the wheel” and rewriting the history of this unique bird, I have asked the permission of the following authors to reprint their excellent articles on the following Chantecler History page.  Hope you enjoy reading and learning more about another one of our uniquely Canadian breeds! 

Our next addition to the farm might just have to be the Canadienne Cow…

• Chantecler Chickens • Chantecler History • Chantecler Links •

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Updated Thursday March 23, 2006

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