It’s not uncommon for chickens, especially roosters, to have iridescent green* feathers of varying intensity and hue, but those feathers are typically located on the body or tail, and are really more like black feathers with a green sheen. Some ckickens will have these feathers up in the head/neck area like
A) This Nice Australorp Rooster
B) This Buckwild Mutuant, which looks an awful lot like some of the feral chickens I saw roaming Hawai’i, though the photographer does not say where this specimen was found. His green feathers go right up to his throat! I’ve seen specimens there with some outright teal necks and heads, though they didn’t seem to be as popular with the ladies as thier more fair-headed cousins.
*Fun fact: almost no birds have green-pigmented feathers. The green color comes from light reflected from microscopic structures on the bird’s feathers. the only bird with Actual Green Pigment is the Turaco, which has Turacoverdin! This is probably only a fun fact if you are a biology nerd, but it’s one of the EXTREMELY FEW green pigments that occurs in vertebrete animals and comes from the Tucraco’s copper-rich diet, which is another Fun Fact only if you are major NERD. here’s a picture of one becuase they’re cute, and becuase it’s a really strange green for a bird to have:
So while Turacos come in the nice limey green color like in my Icon, Chickens Do not.
Yet.
I see in the replies section a lot of people are confused how there are other birds that are green– all of the birds that do not have green pigmented feathers, but look green?! The OP mentions this but for clarity: That is because bird feathers are colored in two ways: Pigments and structural color! Green (and blue) pigment is pretty rare in bird feathers. Turacos, as mentioned above, being an exception!
Most birds that sport bright blues, greens, purples, and iridescent feathers have feathers that use structural color. The feather uses light refraction between microscopic physical structures in the feather barbs to create a color. Iridescent feathers are the greatest example of this (it’s how they color ‘shift’ depending on the angle of the light and your viewing angle!), but non-iridescent feathers can use structures to make color too, by using air pockets in the feather barbs to refract light and bounce only certain spectra back to the viewer (most of the non-iridescent blues, greens, violets, and UV colors of feathers are formed this way; e.g. jays, parrots, fruit doves, etc). People who have seen green/blue parrots bathe know that if the feathers get soaked, they look brownish… because they are no longer refracting the light in a way that allows you to see the green/blue (at least until they dry out!).
Some birds have both structural and pigmented feather colors! IF YOU DON’T THINK THIS IS SOME OF THE RADDEST STUFF I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU, COME ON
