Breeds

Breeding Mille Fleur Bantams: Old English Game and d'Uccle Color Basics

Field guide · Updated October 13, 2026 · about 4 min read

Mille Fleur is one of the showiest color patterns in bantam chickens: every feather carries its own small white spot. The pattern is best known in Belgian d'Uccle bantams but also appears in Booted bantams and in Old English Game bantams. This page covers what the pattern is, where it is recognized, and the basics breeders should know before setting up pens.

What the pattern looks like

FeatherSite, a long-running poultry reference, describes the Mille Fleur pattern as a ground color of mahogany, with each feather carrying a crescent-shaped black bar and a V-shaped white tip, or spangle. The result is a bird that looks dotted with white over rich red-brown.

A closely related pattern is the Porcelain: the same arrangement, but with a straw ground color, blue barring and a white tip (FeatherSite). Wikipedia's list of chicken colors calls porcelain a diluted version of mille fleur. Breeders also work with variants such as lemon and golden-necked mille fleur, and the Poultry Club of Great Britain's 2008 standards listed millefleur, gold millefleur, lemon millefleur and silver millefleur for Booted bantams.

Wait for the first adult molt

The most important practical point: according to FeatherSite, the true Mille Fleur coloring usually does not appear until the bird's first adult molt. Chick and juvenile plumage is not a reliable guide, so breeders should not make final selection decisions on young birds.

Which bantams carry Mille Fleur

For the d'Uccle, Wikipedia gives its creator as Michael Van Gelder of Uccle, near Brussels, in the early 20th century, possibly from crosses of the Sabelpoot (Booted bantam) and the Barbu d'Anvers. The breed was first shown in 1905. The APA lists seven d'Uccle varieties, with weights of 740 g for cocks and 620 g for hens.

For the Old English Game bantam, the Poultry Club of Great Britain describes a comparatively recent breed, developed mainly from common crossbred country bantams, whose ideal is "a true miniature" of the full-size fighting Game — an ideal it says is seldom reached. FeatherSite notes that the body styles of US and UK Old English Game bantams differ noticeably. Wikipedia gives bantam weights of 620–740 g for males and 510–620 g for females.

Breeding basics

Start from the standard

Breed standards are the reference for both type (body shape) and color. In the US, the American Poultry Association's Standard of Perfection is the reference for recognized varieties such as the millefleur d'Uccle; in Britain, the Poultry Club of Great Britain's standards apply. For the Old English Game bantam, the PCGB says its standard is compiled from that of the Old English Game Bantam Club and follows the "Carlisle" ideal. A Mille Fleur that is beautifully spotted but wrong in type will not do well on the show table.

Type versus color

The PCGB makes a pointed remark about Old English Game bantams: while a good large Game bird is unlikely to have a poor color, that does not hold for the bantams, where color plays a very important part. Expect to balance two goals — game type and even spangling — in every generation.

Know your genetics, but verify

The white feather tip is the eye-catching part of the pattern. The Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals (OMIA) database records that the chicken mottling trait (mo), described as "a white tip on an otherwise black feather," is autosomal recessive and associated with the EDNRB2 gene. A recessive trait shows only when a bird inherits two copies, one from each parent. OMIA's entry does not mention mille fleur, and the sources cited here do not document the full genetic recipe for the pattern, so treat claims about exact Mille Fleur genotypes with caution and test them with your own matings.

Practical points

• Select after molt. Because adult color appears after the first adult molt, hold back promising youngsters until then.
• Keep records. Note which pairings produce even ground color, clean black bars and neat white tips.
• Watch d'Uccle feet and hocks. FeatherSite notes that the d'Uccle standard calls for vulture hocks, a disqualification in most other breeds — don't import that trait into Old English Game lines.
• Talk to clubs. FeatherSite lists the Old English Game Bantam Club of America and the Belgian d'Uccle & Booted Bantam Club as breed contacts.

Eggs and expectations

These are ornamental bantams first. Purina notes that Silkies and bantams may lay closer to 50 eggs a year, against up to 250 for high-producing backyard hens. If eggs matter, see how long hens keep laying.