A New Home for the Official State Bird

Above, the first of two new poultry houses en route to its place in the South County Museum's Living History Farm exhibit. June 2005.

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The Rhode Island Red was created in Little Compton in 1854, and was a great success. It was adopted as the state bird in 1954 but over the years, particularly the past two or three decades, it has been extensively crossbred with other stocks to the point where its survival as a distinct breed was threatened.

South County Museum is helping to restore the breed and ensure its future. Indeed, the museum is now the only place in the state you will find a purebred flock of the two varieties of Reds — Single Comb and Rose Comb — bred purely for the maintenance of the separate characteristics and blood line. Most of them are housed in two poultry houses based on a traditional poultry-house design of the late 19th century, and built for the museum by students of the Narragansett Chapter of FFA (with some of the supplies provided by Arnold's Lumber of Wakefield). They were delivered to the museum on July 21, 2005.