The large orpington is created at the end of the 19th century by an englischman William Cook from the town Orpington (England). For this creation he used: Croad Langshans, Minorca’s, Langshans and Plymouth Rocks. The objective of William Cook was to create a chicken with a good egg-producingcapacity.

Examples of Langshan, Plymouth Rocks and Minorca’s, which have leaded to the creation of the orpington:

black orpington, white orpington, buff orpington, blue orpington

 The first orpingtons were black. After that William Cook started to create white ones and buff ones. The orpingtons are large and round and they do have a lot of generous feathers. Their brest is deep and their back is short. The back goes in a flowing line to the tail. The tail is short but high. The head is small with a single comb. The earlobes are red and their eyes are mostly orange, except for the colours: splash, black, blue and lavender; those are having dark eyes.

In the mean time the orpington is available in severtal colours, for example: black, buff, white, blue, birch, buff-blacklaced, silver-blacklaced, cuckoo/ striped/ red, porcellan/jubilee, mottled ( black-whitepearled ), white-columbia, double laced partridge, lavender, buff-bluelaced, etc etc. And the different colours keep growing! For an up-to-date statement, please look at the colourpage.

The orpington is indeed a large chickenrace: they can weight 3000-5000 kilograms. The hens are laying round 200 eggs a year. Comparing to their body-size the eggs are not very large; the are like the size of a Barnevelder.