About Utrerana Chickens

I understand. I will present the breed description for the Utrerana chicken in a narrative style, using paragraph breaks to ensure easy readability, while still avoiding bullets or ordered lists.

The Utrerana is a distinctive Mediterranean-type chicken breed, originating from the town of Utrera in Seville, Andalusia, in Southern Spain. It was first established in the mid-1920s with the aim of creating a highly productive laying hen. This is an endangered native breed today, primarily kept by amateur breeders, and is the subject of various conservation programs to protect its genetics and numbers.

Historically, the Utrerana was prized as a dual-purpose bird with a primary aptitude for egg production, once capable of laying up to 180 large, white or off-white eggs per year, which made it competitive in early commercial poultry farming. Due to the introduction of modern hybrid layers, the breed’s overall numbers and productivity have declined, with hens in contemporary backyard settings typically laying between 94 and 140 eggs annually, often exhibiting seasonal laying patterns.

The breed is officially recognized in four main color varieties: Black, Partridge, Black-barred (also known as Franciscana), and White. Physically, the Utrerana is a light and robust chicken, easily identified by its prominent, large comb and striking white earlobes. Roosters mature to a weight of approximately 2.4–2.6 kg, while hens are smaller, around 1.9–2.0 kg. This breed is valued for its hardiness, a rustic character that makes it well-suited to free-range or low-input farming systems, and its long reproductive lifespan, which often exceeds four years.