Talking Ayam Cemani with Gina
The mysterious all black chicken! What to look for, the breed club and status with APA. Gina gives us all the details!
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Carey: 0:01
Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. We're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.
Intro: 0:14
Mhm.
Duncan: 0:23
The Poultry Nerds Podcast is brought to you, in part, by the generous support of Show Pro. Show Pro is a revolutionary poultry feed supplement, supercharged with key ingredients like Cysteine the number 1 amino acid to make your Show Bird a Show Pro Champion! Check out show pro usa dot com for more information.
Gina: 0:41
I am Gina Wrather, and our farm is Wrather Farms, we're located in Columbia, Tennessee. We raise Heritage Rhode Island Reds, Bielefelder, Splash Americana, and Ayam Cemani.
Carey: 0:56
My kind of people
Gina: 0:57
We are www.wratherfarms.com and that's Wrather with W-R-A-T-H-E-R.
Jennifer: 1:06
And of course you're probably on Facebook.
Gina: 1:08
Of course. Wrather Farms columbia TN.
Jennifer: 1:15
So the biggest question I have is it I Ayam Cemani I am Seminis. What is it? How do you say it?
Gina: 1:23
Goodness, so I run a Facebook group for the zombie chickens and one of the questions To gain admittance to the group is, name two breeds that can be used to create a zombie. And everybody tries to spell Ayam Cemani. It is probably the most misspelled chicken breed I've ever seen. Maybe even more so than Orpington.
Jennifer: 1:47
Oh my God, that is like my huge pet peeve. There, listen viewers listeners, there's no H in Orpingtons.
Carey: 1:55
I keep it simple.
Gina: 1:56
The pronunciation is, I am Simani. I am Simani. In Indonesia, they will pronounce it, Ayam Cemani. Depending on where you're from, either pronunciation is correct.
Jennifer: 2:15
I'm gonna say the birds originated in Indonesia?
Gina: 2:18
Yes, they did.
Jennifer: 2:20
All right, why would they need a black bird? Like a solid, this is a solid black bird, there's nothing, right?
Gina: 2:29
There is, there should be no color, no pink skin, no pink toes, nothing, no color in this bird. This bird should be black through and through black comb, black feet, black legs, black eyes, black plumage, black organs, black meat. Everything is black. If you process an I. M. shimani, the only thing that you will find in that bird of a normal color will be the liver. And sometimes even it is tinted dark.
Jennifer: 3:02
Does the black have a sheen to it? Like the cochins have a green sheen. Yes,
Gina: 3:09
the blue green sheen is acceptable. The purple sheen is frowned upon. There's some debate as to whether that is just an optical illusion or if that has something to do with nutrition or if it has something to do with the bird hiding some pheomelanin or red pigment in its plumage.
Jennifer: 3:31
Interesting. All right, another myth buster. Do they lay black eggs? Oh
Gina: 3:37
no. Somebody asked me that just the other day. They were here visiting and looking at the birds and said, do they really lay black eggs? And this was a person that wanted to breed them themselves. No, they don't lay black eggs. They lay a tented egg. It's almost white. Some of our hens laid a nearly white egg. I got one of their eggs confused with a white legged pullet egg. One time and was shocked when the little black chick hatched, but he was, I am Shamani through and through.
Jennifer: 4:09
When they hatch, are they black or do they have white on them, cream color on them?
Gina: 4:13
They should be black from hatch to death. So everything on this chick, most black chicks, you think of your black Australorps, You think of some black Jersey Giants. Most of your black chicks are hatching with some white on their chest, white under belly, white under their throat, maybe some white around their eyes. Ayam Cemani should be black right from the get go. And one of the things that we do when we pull them out of the hatcher is, we're waiting. We start looking, we look in their mouth, even look at the pads of their toes. We inspect every little inch of that chick down and see if there is a little white feather anywhere. And then that continues throughout their maturation. And, we hope that we don't find any, what we'll call color leakage. We don't want any colored feathers, no silver, no gold. A lot of times you'll see that show up in the hackle, sometimes in the saddle. You'll look for, keep checking their mouth throughout their maturity. So the thing that makes the Ayam Chamani have the black skin, black comb, black beak, black waddles, everything is a genetic phenomenon called fibromelanism. You want them to be homozygous for fibromelanism. And fibromelanism is a funny little gene. It tends to increase in depth and quality as the bird matures to a point of about a year old, and then we'll start to reseed again. But your bird should never ever display any sort of pink skin inside or out.
Jennifer: 6:01
Carey has a question. I see it on his face.
Carey: 6:04
Okay, I really do. So earlier you mentioned the zombie chickens.
Gina: 6:09
Yeah.
Carey: 6:10
And so they are black and if you mix with a leghorn and who's white do they, if you take a male, Ayam Cemani and breed it to a female leghorn, will you get black females and white males?
Gina: 6:32
No, you will get. Okay. Ideally, your Ayam Cemani is a quality. I am Tmani. He's going to assess two copies of the fibromelanism gene, which means he's going to pass one copy of that gene to every one of his offspring.
Jennifer: 6:49
Right.
Gina: 6:50
So that's going to mean that all of your chicks are going to inherit that and have the potential to have the dark skin. Your Ayam Cemani should also be homozygous, virgin. At the E locus, the extension of black, that bird will, should pass the virgin allele to every one of its offspring. And therefore all of its offspring should be black at the E locus. Now your dominant white birds, your white legrons are homozygous for the dominant white gene. And so they're going to pass one dominant white gene to all of their offspring. And even though all the offspring from your Ayam Cemani are going to be basically black, the dominant white is going to trump that. And so think of it like throwing a piece of Swiss cheese on a piece of black construction paper. So one copy of dominant white will always cause some black or base coat leakage. through those holes in the Swiss cheese. And so what you end up with is a bird with fibromelanism that has black plumage, but it has been basically covered in white with the exception of a few black spots here and there.
Jennifer: 8:18
Now the
Gina: 8:18
funny thing about the exact cross that you mentioned, the Ayam Cemani cock over the white leghorn hen, is that the white leghorns possess Not one, but two sex linked genes that suppress fibromelanism. And what that ends up doing is creating sex linked chicks when you create zombies. So that white leghorn hen is going to pass, generally, one copy of the barring gene. You wouldn't know that they carry barring, but they generally carry barring, which is a huge suppressor of dermal melanin. They also carry the sex link inhibitor of dermal melanin. And so when their sons inherit both copies of those fibro inhibitors, they end up with pale combs, pale beaks, and pale legs. And conversely, your little pullet chicks will hatch with dark legs, dark combs, dark beaks. And if that's not a poultry nerd, I don't know what it is.
Jennifer: 9:24
Welcome to the club.
Carey: 9:26
Like I've, I feel amazing right now.
Jennifer: 9:29
Yeah,
Carey: 9:32
this is awesome. I've had a lot of fascination by that breed. Jennifer and I have talked about it several times. At one point in time, I wanted to get some just because they're neat. They're unique, and also with them being black, once they get full size, hawks might not come in my yard and try to take my quail out of my barn when the doors open.
Gina: 10:00
Now we know that's not true.
Jennifer: 10:03
Just how big do they get?
Gina: 10:05
The Ayam Cemani or the zombies?
Jennifer: 10:07
Let's hate both.
Gina: 10:09
The Ayam Cemani, they're a smaller breed. They're definitely smaller, on the smaller side of large fowl. Larger than a bantam, but they are on the smaller end of the large fowl.
Jennifer: 10:21
Okay. And then the zombies are
Carey: 10:23
They're cool. They are
Gina: 10:25
very cool. Yeah. And the zombies, the zombies can be created, they're like Easter Eggers or Olive Eggers, you can use a lot of different things to make a zombie. The only real requirement is that you cross the Ayam Cemani with something that carries that dominant white gene. Okay. So you can use the white leghorn right now. We are using cackles version of a Rhode Island white, which is not an actual Rhode Island white. They just stole the name. They're making some nice little zombie chicks. You can use the solid white ermine Americana's. You wouldn't want to use the APA accepted white Americana's because they're recessive white. Most people don't know there is a dominant white. There is a recessive white. Don't use the wrong one or else you'll get all black chicks out of your. hopeful zombie hatch. But, the zombies are a really good outlet to the next point that I want to talk about because the Ayam Sinani is such a high cull rate breed. It is extremely difficult to get this all black bird inside and out. The genetics have to be right. And even if you, even when you're sure that you have got your genetics right and this next hatch is going to be the one and they're all going to be rock stars, you're going to have chicks that hatch with full pink mouths that are going to mature to have some silver in the hackle. They're going to have white toes that hatch. It is really hard breed to get right. And you wouldn't think, you're just breeding a black bird. How hard can it be?
Carey: 11:56
I can say as somebody that was fascinated with it, when I would look on local groups for people that had those, look at, I looked several different places in surrounding states. I didn't find you, but now that I have, that'll be a conversation for later. I can say the, everybody has pure Ayam Cemani that look more purple than they do black or that have white or yellow toes or white or yellow feets or red in their mouth. And I'm like, I'm somewhat of a snob when it comes to Somebody saying they've got a pure animal. Yeah. And when I see then a picture of that and they want a hundred bucks for it on Facebook for that one bird and his tongue is red. I'm like, you're, no, that's not how it works.
Gina: 12:53
Yeah. Yeah. And part of that is part of it is greed. And part of it is honest to goodness. Yeah. ignorance of what Ayam Cemani is supposed to be. A lot of people see a black bird and they overlook the purple waddles, the mulberry in the
Jennifer: 13:11
waddles.
Gina: 13:13
They overlook the fact that it has a fifth toe, clearly not a purebred bird. They overlook the fact that it may have a few silver feathers in the hackle, or they don't mention to you that it had white toes at hatch or that it had a white patch on its throat at hatch. I always tell people, be really careful. If you want to buy these birds for the purposes of breeding, there are more pet quality birds out there than there are SOP quality birds out there by far. Most people that get into Ayam Cemani buy one of the dinks, one of the pet quality and learn from it. before they actually find something that is worthy of being bred forward. And we're one of them. We went into the Ayam Cemani through a friend and she was up front with us. She's they're really probably not pet or anything other than pet quality. So be prepared. And we hatched them out and we were all excited because everything was black except the inside of their mouth. And it was whitish. And so we grew them out and we grew to love them and we learned to love their personalities. They have amazing temperaments. And when they grew up, sure enough, they had some gold leakage and the hackles, and we opened up their mouths that, four or five months old and they were just glowing pink. And so we said, you know what? We figured out that we liked this breed. We want to upgrade. So yeah. But a lot of people start out there.
Jennifer: 14:50
So are they accepted in the APA?
Gina: 14:53
They are in the process. I believe we've had our first qualifying meet. And our second qualifying meet will be sometime this year, maybe. Don't quote me on that because I need to check with a couple friends. But yeah, we are working. We have a SOP, a proposed SOP. and working towards acceptance. So we hope it's right around the corner.
Jennifer: 15:20
Good. Because we're geared towards beginner information so if somebody wanted to get started in them, would you recommend full fledged SOP breeder like yourself? Or do like you did and buy the pet qualities and try them out and before they commit.
Gina: 15:43
The bad thing about starting out with a pet quality, if your eventual goal is to breed, is the temptation to say, let me just try to breed this bird and see if maybe by some chance I can produce something better than itself. And there are enough of those birds out there. So if you think that you will ever want to breed your Ayam Cemani, definitely go to a reputable breeder. If you are talking to someone about buying their Ayam Cemani, ask for a video, like a live video, that person picking up their bird, show you their mouth show you the bottoms of their feet, look at, get closeups of all the feathers and hackles. Look at the parent stock because if you, even if you say, okay, I'm interested in buying your 12 week old chicks, a lot can change, especially with the roosters. A lot can change between 12 weeks and six months. So when those mature feathers come in their full fibro doesn't come in until six months to a year old. So yeah, if you are considering breeding, the Ayam Cemani breeders association has a breeders directory. You can check there. It's not a guarantee of quality just like any other breeder directory, but it's a great place to start.
Jennifer: 17:12
What do you mean when you said their full fibro doesn't come in?
Gina: 17:17
So I talked about, when they hatch the fibromelanism, the fibro expression, the depth of the black pigment in their skin will begin to darken and deepen up until about six months to a year. So And it follows, interestingly, the color of your combs in a normal colored chicken. Your chicks hatch, they got these little yellow combs, and as they mature, the roosters especially, their combs gonna start to turn a little darker pink, and then by the time they've reached sexual maturity, they're bright red. So the fibro kind of follows that. At point of lay, our pullets will be about as dark as what they will ever be. Fibro expression wise, and then at about a year of age, you may start seeing a very gradual decline.
Jennifer: 18:12
What about after their first molt? Will you get eyeball feathers or colorings at that point?
Gina: 18:19
You should not. And I think there's, when I got into the Splash Americana, And I was growing out some chicks and I had one chick that presented with one little gold feather in her cheek and I freaked out, I'm talking on the Americana groups and somebody said just fuck it. I thought, Oh, that's deceitful. I can't do that. But I plucked it and it didn't come back. And I think for things like that, Sometimes you may have an anomaly. It's not necessarily genetic. Um, who knows, it may have had an injury. There is a chick or something odd. I know with horses, if they have an injury, their hair might grow back white and it might take a while for the pigment to come back in that spot. It's not a genetic thing. So my theory is if you have a Cemani that has a single gold or silver feather, pluck it, see if it comes back. But if your leakage that you're seeing is symmetrical or all the way around the neck or on both sides of the shoulders or, all the way, the full length of the back, you're sunk, that's peck quality for sure. But if you have just one odd feather, pluck that sucker, see if it comes back.
Carey: 19:42
I'm just in amazement because the mystery behind this bird and everything that it is something that, that I'd really like people to find out about and people to learn about. And I like what y'all are doing with the breed as far as getting it affiliated and accepted by the APA that I have read the process in their guideline that takes, and it's rather lengthy and there's a lot to it. And I can appreciate anybody that's willing to put that kind of work and dedication into it. One question I did have is you said something about culling. No. Me for my reds. I understand that I'm going to have to hatch a hundred to get maybe 10. Is the Cemani worse than that or better than that? Or is it about the same? 10 percent
Gina: 20:38
loaded
Carey: 20:39
question
Gina: 20:41
really depends on the quality that you're starting with. So starting with the quality that, that we started with when we got our first Cemani a hundred percent call rate. Sorry about you. Start from scratch. So if you
Carey: 20:55
bought them from a hatchery or somewhere like that's probably,
Gina: 20:59
that is the absolute worst place that you could buy your, Ayam Cemani.
Carey: 21:03
I can tell, I could look at a lot of pictures at a lot of different hatcheries that have them for sale for hatching eggs and exorbitant price. But a lot of them have undesirable traits, which is why I didn't buy any.
Gina: 21:19
Yeah. Yeah. And, something I should mention, the bird is more than just the outward color. Just like any other breed we are focusing on type. It should be a game bird type build with an upright stance. They should be long legged. There is a lookalike that a lot of people have passed off as an Ayam Cemani and that's the spark. How now it is a Swedish black hen. And other than frequently having the mulberry, red tinted comb and waddles, they look nearly identical to the lay person, to an Ayam Cemani, but they have a level top line and a layer type build. And. We see that in the Ayam Cemani that are offered for sale almost all the time. So the other thing that you want to look for when you're looking for an Ayam Cemani to buy for a breeder is that game bird type confirmation.
Carey: 22:26
Gotcha. Okay.
Jennifer: 22:30
All right. I have a question. These zombies. So you can't just take any old Ayam Cemani and put it over any old Leghorn. and get a zombie. It's a very specific genetic makeup that creates the zombie.
Gina: 22:47
Ideally. You're going to get a smaller percentage of good zombie chicks if you use a pet quality Ayam Cemani.
Jennifer: 22:56
Okay. And then just because and then you have the zombie, but that is only going to breed true on that generation. The second generation will not breed true. At that point, you just have a barnyard mix, basically, right?
Gina: 23:11
Yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna get some pretty wild chicks come out of that, and they, about 12 and a half percent of chicks from the F1 to F1 cross are going to be the zombie look that you're looking for.
Jennifer: 23:27
Wow.
Gina: 23:28
Okay. So 12 out of 100 chicks. It's better to take your Ayam Cemani pullet back to the Ayam Cemani sire.
Jennifer: 23:37
All right, so what I'm hearing for our listeners who are new and thinking about getting them, is they need to check out the Ayam Cemani Breeders Club to find hopefully a reputable breeder and not to order from just anybody. And if they can only have pullets, they do need to order from somebody who knows how to make the zombie cross correctly.
Gina: 24:05
Yeah.
Jennifer: 24:07
All right, anything else they need to know?
Gina: 24:12
Feed requirements. Okay. There is some discussion that, the feather quality in the Ayam Semani, we noticed as the quality of the fibromelanism goes up. So when you get into the realm of a full black tongue Ayam Cemani, it is an interesting phenomenon that we also see the feather quality decline. Okay. It reminds me of the self blue or lavender feather quality issues. You start getting the frayed feathers or bottle brush. Ayam Cemani or hard feather, iron feather. You'll hear a lot of different terms bandied about. But the interesting thing about that is those birds tend to have a higher quality of fibro. Better black mouth, fully black comb and waddles. No, no hint of mulberry, no hint of purple. Those are nice birds. So we're, we've got breeders that are working on feather quality, and I'm interested to see if we can strike a balance between quality feathers and deep fibro. Or if they're just going to go hand in hand, the deeper fibro is. It's going to remain a fact of life with the poorer feather quality. There's also some suggestion that maybe these birds have a higher riboflavin requirement. And I would refute that and say that I don't think that's probably true. We have an incidence of clubbed down. in some Ayam Cemani chicks. It's common and it's been blamed on a riboflavin deficiency in the hens. But I have hatched clubbed down Ayam Cemani crosses from an Ayam Cemani rooster. So I don't think that it came from the hen. The hen was a cream legged bar. I think it's genetic. So I haven't found anybody that's fed a higher riboflavin diet and eliminated those issues. And Carey, there's also the discussion lately about the amino acids and cysteine and feather quality. And I'm interested in maybe playing with that and see what happens because the birds that we're growing out now, have the feather quality issues that come along with the nice black tongues. So I might be interested in doing some experiments in the next year or so do some side by sides and see if extra cysteine would be helpful.
Carey: 27:00
Okay. The I've done a lot of studying on cysteine and methionine and the effects that they have on the feather quality. So far the things that I have seen and the testing that I have seen really does make a noticeable effect.
Gina: 27:19
Interesting. And
Carey: 27:21
it, I mean it, it's even to the point that it can help a bird recover from molt extremely fast.
Gina: 27:27
Yeah, that might be really helpful for us to know. So the APA. is frowning on the poor feather quality that comes with these higher quality fibro birds. So we're caught in a catch 22 here, do we take our lesser quality fibro birds to the show where we have it written into the SOP that they should have, good fibro expression even within the mouth, or do we take our good fibro expression birds with our terrible feather quality and get docked for condition?
Carey: 28:03
That's it's being tested. I can say that.
Gina: 28:06
Interesting.
Carey: 28:08
Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive all the new episodes right when they are released, and they are released on Thursday mornings. Feel free to email us at PoultryNerds@gmail.Com and let us know what you think of the show. If you're on Facebook, check us out at the Poultry Nerds and make sure to give us a like and a follow. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning and keep it egg citing. This is Carey from Poultry Nerds signing off. Feathers up, everyone.
