Chicken Types, Characteristics & Uses

Chicks are born covered in down, but they mature quickly, becoming fully feathered after four to five weeks. Fertilized embryos develop quickly, and chicks hatch approximately 21 days later. There is some debate about what the chicken’s scientific name should be. Add chicken to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

The market for chicken meat has grown dramatically since then, with worldwide exports reaching nearly 12.5 million metric tons (about 13.8 million tons) by the early 21st century. By the mid-20th century, however, meat production had outstripped egg production as most-play-bangladesh.com a specialized industry. For most of that period, chickens were a common part of the livestock complement of farms and ranches throughout Eurasia and Africa. Chicken domestication likely occurred more than once in Southeast Asia and possibly India over the most recent 7,400 years, and the first domestications may have been for religious reasons or for the raising of fighting birds. In situations where one adult bird challenges another—which happens most often when a new bird is introduced into the flock—fights involving males risk injury and death more often than fights involving females. Each flock of chickens develops a social hierarchy that determines access to food, nesting sites, mates, and other resources.

Newly hatched chicks of both modern and heritage varieties weigh the same, about 37 g (1.3 oz). While the origin is Germanic, it is unclear exactly where the word came from, although it could ultimately have come from an imitation of the sound a chicken makes. The word chicken comes from Old English cicen (pronounced essentially the same as in Modern English). It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is one of the most common and widespread domesticated animals in the world.

Roast chicken

• For most of that period, chickens were a common part of the livestock complement of farms and ranches throughout Eurasia and Africa.
• At about six months, males produce viable sperm, and females produce viable eggs.
• Strongly inbred Langshan chickens display obvious inbreeding depression in reproduction, particularly for traits such as age when the first egg is laid and egg number.
• Domesticated chickens freely interbreed with populations of red junglefowl.

In older sources, and still often in trade and scientific contexts, chickens as a species are described as common fowl or domestic fowl. As of 2023, the global chicken population exceeds 26.5 billion, with more than 50 billion birds produced annually for consumption. Chickens are primarily kept for their meat and eggs, though they are also kept as pets. Whole chickens tend to be sold trussed (tied with string) – remove this and pull the legs gently away from the body to ensure even cooking. It’s often considerably cheaper to buy a whole chicken and joint it yourself, than to buy ready-prepared breasts and leg joints. Budget, ethics and taste all come into the equation but what almost all chefs, cooks and food writers agree on is that a good-quality, free-range bird is vastly superior in flavour to a cheap factory-farmed bird.

Farming

To add chicken to a word list please sign up or log in. Chickens have been featured in art in farmyard scenes such as Adriaen van Utrecht’s 1646 Turkeys and Chickens and Walter Osborne’s 1885 Feeding the Chickens. The pseudo-riddle “Why did the chicken cross the road?” dates to 1847, or earlier.

Phoenicians spread chickens along the Mediterranean coasts as far as Iberia. These chickens may have been introduced during pre-Columbian times to South America via Polynesian seafarers, but this is disputed. Skeletons of birds in the Gallus genus were used as grave goods at the site, confirming domestication. Genomic studies estimated that the chicken was domesticated 8,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and spread to China and India 2,000 to 3,000 years later.

At about six months, males produce viable sperm, and females produce viable eggs. The chicken is a sacred animal in many cultures and deeply embedded in belief systems and religious practices.Roosters are sometimes used for divination, a practice called alectryomancy. In 2006, scientists researching the ancestry of birds switched on a chicken recessive gene, talpid2, and found that the embryo jaws initiated formation of teeth, like those found in ancient bird fossils. In the process of domestication, chickens were apparently kept initially for cockfighting, and only later used for food.

More than 50 billion chickens are reared annually as a source of meat and eggs. These domesticated chickens spread across Southeast and South Asia where they interbred with local wild species of junglefowl, forming genetically and geographically distinct groups. It is estimated that chickens share between 71 and 79% of their genome with red junglefowl. Domesticated chickens freely interbreed with populations of red junglefowl. Strongly inbred Langshan chickens display obvious inbreeding depression in reproduction, particularly for traits such as age when the first egg is laid and egg number.

Other poultry

Many people obtain chickens for their egg production but often name them and treat them as any other pet like cats or dogs. Genetic sequencing of chicken bones from archaeological sites in Europe revealed that in the High Middle Ages chickens became less aggressive and began to lay eggs earlier in the breeding season. During the Hellenistic period (4th–2nd centuries BC), in the southern Levant, chickens began to be widely domesticated for food. Analysis of the most popular commercial breed shows that the White Leghorn breed possesses a mosaic of divergent ancestries inherited from different subspecies of red junglefowl.

Egg laying is stimulated by the long stretches of daylight that occur during the warmer months; however, artificial lights placed in chicken coops can trigger a hen’s egg laying response throughout the year. Males (called cocks or roosters) and females (hens) are known for their fleshy combs, lobed wattles hanging below the bill, and high-arched tails. Although many taxonomists and ornithologists consider it as a domesticated form of the wild red jungle fowl, some classify it as a subspecies of the red jungle fowl (i.e., G. gallus domesticus), whereas others, including the U.S. Despite the chicken’s close relationship with the red jungle fowl, there is evidence that the gray jungle fowl (G. sonneratii) of southern India and other jungle fowl species, also members of Gallus, may have contributed to the bird’s ancestry.