The Craigard Ixworths

From Tom Bryson

Kilchoan is a dangerous place for hens and it’s not just the usual suspects; weasels, stoats, mink, pine marten, otters, foxes and black backed gulls. The rare breed “Ixworths” at Craigard have survived two attempts this month to make them even scarcer: one was attacked by a visitor’s dog, now minus its tail, the hen that is; another was hit by a speeding car - it’s the one with the limp.

In the 1920s Reginald Appleyard, a poultry breeder in the Suffolk village of Ixworth, was looking for a breed of hen that would lay well and produce a really good, meaty carcass. He couldn’t find one, so he set about producing his own breed of dual purpose hen. Appleyard combined the meat qualities of the Cornish Game with the size of the White Orpington and the egg laying abilities of the White Leghorn and Wyandotte to produce the Ixworth. He bred the ideal smallholder’s hen.

Ixworths were very popular until the 1950s when specialist hybrid layers and fast growing broiler hybrids from the USA replaced them. Numbers went into steep decline with only a handful of enthusiasts keeping the breed going. The “Rare breeds Survival Trust” estimate that there are between three and four hundred Ixworths surviving in the UK, this means that Kilchoan, with the 19 specimens at Craigard, could have four per cent of the World’s Ixworth population.