Chicken Types, Characteristics & Uses

Some physical characteristics of chickens include combs, wattles, and earlobes. Improved breeds can weigh up to 4kg when they are a couple of weeks old. These birds lay eggs ranging from olive green to pure white, blue, and dark brown. Chickens come in various varieties, breeds, classes, and strains.

These birds also have different feather coloration, ranging from brown, white, gray, and black. A broody hen will sit fast on her nest and will protest if disturbed or removed. He does this by clucking in a high pitch as well as picking up and dropping the food.

• Pullets are female chickens that haven’t reached adulthood.
• 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.
• 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.
• The English chicken class consists of chickens originating from the UK and Australia.
• Middle Eastern chicken remains go back to a little earlier than 2000 BC in Syria.

All chickens originating from a specific place and having similar characteristics belong to the same family. All chickens are members of the kingdom Animalia. Chicken wattles differ in size since some chickens have bigger wattles than others. Some breeds have side-by-side combs, while others have single combs. A chicken’s physical characteristics differ by breed.

Animal Classification

Some breeds have a mutation that causes extra feathering under the face, giving the appearance of a beard. Adult chickens of both sexes have a fleshy crest on their heads called a comb or cockscomb, and hanging flaps of skin on either side under their beaks called wattles; combs and wattles are more prominent in males. Modern varieties however grow much faster; by day 35 a Ross 708 broiler may weigh 1.8 kg (4.0 lb) as against the 1.05 kg (2.3 lb) of a heritage chicken of the same age. Newly hatched chicks of both modern and heritage varieties weigh the same, about 37 g (1.3 oz). Chicken can mean a chick, and this was historically the meaning of the word chicken, as in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, where Macduff laments the death of “all my pretty chickens and their dam”.

Broody Hens

Hens often try to lay in nests that already contain eggs and sometimes move eggs from neighbouring nests into their own. As with all birds, reproduction is controlled by a neuroendocrine system, the Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone-I neurons in the hypothalamus. Chickens have been thought of primarily as providers of food, but their cognition, emotions, and sociality are comparable with other birds and mammals. The concept of dominance, involving pecking, was described in female chickens by Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe in 1921 as the “pecking order”. Chickens are gregarious, living in flocks, and incubate eggs and raise young communally.

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. An early study proposed that a single domestication event of the red junglefowl in present-day Thailand gave rise to the modern chicken. It is estimated that chickens share between 71 and 79% of their genome with red junglefowl. The domestic chicken has subsequently hybridised with grey junglefowl, Sri Lankan junglefowl and green junglefowl; a gene for yellow skin, for instance, was incorporated into domestic birds from the grey junglefowl (G. sonneratii).

Domestication and economic production

This involves the sacrifice of a sacred rooster, often during a ritual cockfight, used as a form of communication with the gods. Chickens are featured widely in folklore, religion, literature, and popular culture. The chicken was the first bird species to have its genome sequenced.

After 12 months of laying, the commercial hen’s egg-laying ability declines to the point where the flock is commercially unviable. Genomic studies estimated that the chicken was domesticated 8,000 years ago krikya-online.com in Southeast Asia and spread to China and India 2,000 to 3,000 years later. Fertile chicken eggs hatch at the end of the incubation period, about 21 days; the chick uses its egg tooth to break out of the shell. Individual chickens dominate others, establishing a pecking order; dominant individuals take priority for access to food and nest sites.