What is Rhode Island's State Bird?

Since 1954, the Rhode Island Red chicken breed has been the state’s official bird.

The breed resulted from a series of poultry experiments begun a hundred years earlier by Captain William Tripp, at his farm in the coastal town of Little Compton. He reportedly bought an oriental “Shanghai” fighting cock off a New Bedford whaling ship and added the large, fiery bird to his flock of Plymouth Rocks and Brown Leghorns.

With the first generation of improved egg production and larger hens, the captain began selectively breeding his flocks of “Tripp’s fowls.” The chickens attained layers of light red feathers, allowing survival in cold winters in the boggy, coastal landscape.

Until the Civil War, people kept flocks in their barnyards and backyards, but as workers left home for towns and city jobs, large scale poultry farms found a market. Isaac C. Wilbour, whose farm bordered the Sakonnet River in Little Compton, began breeding Tripp’s fowls with his own hens, and further improved the breed, giving it the Rhode Island Red name.

In the 1880s and ‘90s, Wilbour modestly called his farm “The Biggest Poultry Farm on Earth,” with over 200 acres and 100 hen houses that held 5,000 laying hens, this at a time when a large poultry operation might have only 500 hens. Each case of eggs produced on Wilbour’s farm, carried his PPP slogan: Practical. Prolific. Profitable.

The breed was recognized for excellence by the Rhode Island Agricultural Experiment Station in 1895, and was first advertised in poultry journals in 1896.

Rhode Island Reds have rich, red-brown feathers, red combs, yellow beaks and feet. Hen colors can vary from a golden-buff with white tail feathers, to deep mahogany with green-tipped tails. Roosters are generally red with orange highlights, and green iridescent tail plumage. Hens mature at six months, can lay from 200 to 300 brown eggs a year, and lay throughout the winter. They are now raised on farms and in backyards worldwide.

A bronze plaque in Adamsville, placed in 1925 by the Rhode Island Red Club and now on the National Register of Historic Places, commemorates the breed.

I once visited a farm near Cape Town, South Africa, and who comes running up to me? A sweet flock of Rhode Island Red hens!

I love the colorful chickens and enjoy painting them. I re-purpose discarded, ordinary chickens I find online or in thrift shops, and paint them RI Red colors, as well as traditional canvas paintings, and the collage in the header. All my RI Reds have stone walls, and this collage “stone” wall is made of back-painted pieces of shattered door glass. The grass and sky are torn strips of deckle-edged paper, and I cut out and painted the tiny rooster on 300# watercolor paper.