The Ayam Cemani has certainly had people talking excitedly about it over the last few years. It is a totally black bird – inside and out, so as you can imagine it has been associated with the Dark Arts especially in its’ own country of Indonesia.

At the current time they remain a pretty rare bird and are very hard to obtain reputable US breeders are sold out.

The Ayam Bekisar originated from matching the green jungle fowl with some domesticated red jungle fowl. This was a tricky process as certain crosses will be infertile.

Interestingly, this group of fowl has a very distinct crow, and was used by seafarers as foghorns on the boats – a practice still used today. Even the name has confused meanings: Ayam means chicken in the Indonesian language, but the name Cemani can either mean the ‘village of Cemani’ in local dialect or ‘solid black’ in Sanskrit, you can take your pick.