CHICKEN English meaning

As of 2023, the global chicken population exceeds 26.5 billion, with more than 50 billion birds produced annually for consumption. It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is one of the most common and widespread domesticated animals in the world. The Sunday roast is often called the UK’s national dish, check out our roast dinner recipes for Sunday roasts that stand out at Jamie Oliver.

Social hierarchy

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. Domesticated chickens freely interbreed with populations of red junglefowl. Strongly jaya9 inbred Langshan chickens display obvious inbreeding depression in reproduction, particularly for traits such as age when the first egg is laid and egg number.

The red junglefowl is well adapted to take advantage of the vast quantities of seed produced during the end of the multi-decade bamboo seeding cycle, to boost its own reproduction. 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). Chickens are descended primarily from the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) and are scientifically classified as the same species. Wild junglefowl can fly, whereas domestic chickens and their flight muscles are too heavy to allow them to fly more than a short distance. Subsequent ovulations may occur within an hour after the previous egg was laid, allowing some hens to produce as many as 300 eggs per year.

Chicken recipes

• 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.
• Many immature males (cockerels) are castrated (usually chemically, with hormones that cause atrophying of the testicles) to become meat birds (capons).
• To initiate courting, some roosters may dance in a circle around or near a hen (a circle dance), often lowering the wing which is closest to the hen.
• 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.
• In the United States alone, more than 8 billion chickens are slaughtered each year for meat, and more than 300 million chickens are reared for egg production.

In the UK and Europe, laying hens are then slaughtered and used in processed foods, or sold as ‘soup hens’. Hens of some breeds can produce over 300 eggs per year; the highest authenticated rate of egg-laying is 371 eggs in 364 days. During the Hellenistic period (4th–2nd centuries BC), in the southern Levant, chickens began to be widely domesticated for food.

Farming

Skeletons of birds in the Gallus genus were used as grave goods at the site, confirming domestication. The chicks imprint on the hen and subsequently follow her continually. Eggs of chickens from the high-altitude region of Tibet have special physiological adaptations that result in a higher hatching rate in low oxygen environments. 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.