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Groninger
Meeuwen is the name of an old Dutch poultry breed. In
Holland (The Netherlands) over 10 local breeds are known.
Barnevelders and Frisians are very well known, but there
are more. About each region, province or sometimes even
a village had developed a local breed. In the last 60
years, the industrialization of farming resulted in a
drastic reduction of the number of chicken of local
breeds. The Groninger Meeuwen, at home in the very
northern province of the Netherlands, called Groningen,
suffered strong. In 1980, 6 cocks and 20 hens were left.
A group of enthusiastic breeders, took immediate action
with result. At the moment, the association of breeders
of Groninger Meeuwen counts over 100 members.
If
regularly in contact with people, like feeding from the
hand, they are very calm. The spreading of these chicken
is very concentrated. In other provinces than Groningen,
these chicken are not found so much. Although there is a
popularity among hobby chicken breeders.
The
Groninger Meeuwen Chicken is a strong animal that was
used to find it own food around the farm. In the character
of the animals nowadays this still can be noticed. Most
of the time they are looking for food, they love to get
out of the coop and do not care about the weather. Even
in winter time, the egg production can go on, as long as
the animal has enough (day)light. I once collected eggs
at minus 15 degrees Celsius (which is pretty cold for
this region).
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The
animal is looking like Frisians, but has some remarkable
differences. First the size is about 2,5 kg (2,0 for the
hens), which is 1 kg more than Frisians. The tail angle
is absolutely not higher than 45 degrees. Frisians have
a typical 90 degrees tail angle. The eyes have a dark
brown color, which is because of the similarity to the
Frisians with orange eyes a difficulty in breeding. The
color is white with black dots or gold brown with black
dots. Than there is a new color for the small versions,
citron with black dots (I'm sorry but never saw them
myself).
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