It was bred as a dual-purpose utility chicken, to be reared both for eggs and for meat; Cook chose black as a colour that would not show the soot and grime of London.

[10] From the early 1890s, large black Langshan–Cochin crosses were being exhibited and marketed as Orpingtons by Joseph Partington of Lytham in Lancashire and other breeders.

[12]: 169 In the United States four colours – black, blue, buff and white – were added to the Standard of Perfection of the American Poultry Association in 1960.

[3] Seven colour varieties are recognised by the Poultry Club of Great Britain: black, blue, buff, cuckoo, jubilee, spangled and white.

[13] The British poultry geneticist W.C. Carefoot bred a chocolate-coloured bantam in the 1990s, a colour previously unknown in chickens, caused by a sex-linked recessive gene.