Until recently, this ancient breed didn’t live outside of Egypt, where it dates to the age of the pharaohs (approximately 3000 to 200 B.C.). In the 1940s, Iowa State University began keeping a flock, as the breed proved useful for students in the poultry genetics program, whose scientists were the first to discover the Fayoumi’s outstanding resistance to disease.
Egyptian Fayoumis are said to be small, active and sassy.