[Jethro Tull]

Does anyone know anything about Baladis. It seems they are the ubiquitous chickens of the Middle East, from Syria to Saudi Arabia. I was wondering if anyone kept them in uk, and if I could acquire some.

[roddycm]

I found the following on backyardchickens.com

"The term "Baladi" refers in the middle east to mix/cross breeds. I live in Israel. In Arabic, the word "Balad" means village or a small town. Baladi - from the village / of the village."

Sounds like it might be a mix breed...

[macgro7]

Balad means town. Baladi means local.

In meat markets of Morocco and other Arab countries "baladi" chickens refers to any cross breed or pure breed local breed which is meant to taste better (probably does) than the "rumi" (literally Roman but what they mean by that is European or Western) which is the commercial white broiler.

I teach Arabic 

[Marches Farmer]

So, could be a highly variable appearance and characteristics, depending on whether the locals most wanted meat or eggs.   Likely to be very hardy as it's probably not a showing breed!

[macgro7]

The thing is most of those chickens run around the village free range so there is not much selection. It's a bit like the Icelandic or Swedish Flower chickens. They are landrace breeds naturally selected for the environment they lived in for centuries. Every area will have their own chicken variety.

[Marches Farmer]

Just like today's Dorking or Sussex in the UK.  These are genetically very fixed, with little variation in appearance because they were originally in a small geographical area.  Thinking about it, they were probably greatly inbred but since only the toughest survived and the folks that kept them probably had the sense to eat to poor doers most health defects would've been bred out over the centuries.