The Wyandotte is an American breed of dual-purpose chicken, raised both for its brown eggs and its yellow-skinned meat. Breed development started around the 1870s and was named for the Wyandot people, Indigenous to North America. It has multiple color variants and is also kept for showing; it was initially known as the American Sebright.
History
The Wyandotte was developed in the United States, in the 1870s, by four people, H. M. Doubleday, John Ray, L. Whittaker, and Fred Houdlette. The original type was the silver-laced, which was recognized by the American Poultry Association in the American Standard of Perfection in 1883; it was also exported to Britain about this time. It had previously been referred to as the Sebright Cochin or American Sebright. The breed's origin is unknown; it is believed to have come from a combination of spangled Hamburgs and dark Brahmas – the Hamburg for the rose comb and the Brahma for the color pattern.
The gold-laced version was developed from breeding silver-laced hens with gold-spangled Hamburg and the partridge Cochin cocks, the white was a sports bird of the silver-laced, the buff version was developed from breeding the silver-laced with buff Cochin stock; the black was also a sport of both the silver-laced and gold-laced. The partridge version was developed from crossing the gold-laced with Indian Game, partridge Cochin, gold penciled Hamburghs and a strain called "Winnebago". The Columbian was a chance crossing of white Wyandottes with barred Plymouth Rock birds;It was named for the Columbian Exposition and World's Fair in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893. The first Wyandotte bantams appeared in the Standard of Perfection in 1933.
In 2015 the breed was listed by the American Livestock Conservancy as "recovering"; after 2016, it was no longer found to be endangered or on their priority list. In Germany, it is listed in category IV, "alert", on the Rote Liste of the Gesellschaft zur Erhaltung alter und gefährdeter Haustierrassen.