Chicken, Chicken

Humans keep chickens primarily as a source of food, consuming both their meat and their eggs.

It is deemed most likely, then, that the yellow skin trait in domestic birds originated in the Grey Junglefowl. Eriksson J, Larson G, Gunnarsson U, Bed'hom B, Tixier-Boichard M, et al. (2008) Identification of the Yellow Skin Gene Reveals a Hybrid Origin of the Domestic Chicken.

Chickens will sometimes fly to explore their surroundings, but usually do so only to flee perceived danger.

They have a communal approach to the incubation of eggs and raising of young. Individual chickens in a flock will dominate others, establishing a "pecking order," with dominant individuals having priority for access to food and nesting locations. Removing hens or roosters from a flock causes a temporary disruption to this social order until a new pecking order is established. Adding hensespecially younger birdsto an existing flock, can lead to violence and injury.

If the nest is small, or one of the hens is particularly determined, this may result in chickens trying to lay on top of each other.Roosters crowing (a loud and sometimes shrill call) is a territorial signal to other roosters. However, crowing may also result from sudden disturbances within their surroundings. Hens cluck loudly after laying an egg, and also to call their chicks.

He does this by clucking in a high pitch as well as picking up and dropping the food. This behavior can also be observed in mother hens, calling their chicks. In some cases the rooster will drag the wing opposite the hen on the ground, while circling her. This is part of chicken courting ritual. When a hen is used to coming to his "call" the rooster may mount the hen and proceed with the fertilization.

Because of its relatively low cost, chicken is one of the most used meats in the world.

Commercially produced is used as a reference point for describing other foods; many are said to "taste like chicken" if they are indistinctive.

Some communities ban only roosters, allowing the quieter hens. The so called "urban hen movement" harks back to the days when chicken keeping was much more common, and involves the keeping of small groups of hens in areas where they may not be expected, such as closely populated cities and suburban areas. City ordinances, zoning regulations or health boards may determine whether chickens may be kept. [2] A general requirement is that the birds be confined to the owner's property, not allowed to roam freely. There may be strictures on the size of the property or how far from human dwellings a coop may be located, etc.

Chickens are usually kept in a roost at night and a pen in the day (unless they are free-range). The floor is covered with bedding such as straw or wood shavings, which, with the high-nitrogen droppings, can go into a compost pile.

Fresh egg yolks are "perky" and float above the white. Yolk color varies. According to Gail Damerow's handbook, "Egg yolks get their color from xanthophyll , a natural yellow-orange pigment in green plants and yellow corn, and the same pigment that colors the skin and shanks of yellow-skinned hens. The exact color of a yolk depends on the source of the xanthophyll." A subsequent table ascribes raw yolks colored "orange to dark yellow" to "green feed, yellow corn." Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens: Care, Feeding, Facilities by Gail Damerow, Pownal VT: Storey Books, (c) 1995. p. 141.

Barb Gorski, a Pennsylvania farmer of pastured poultry, had some of her chicken eggs analyzed under the USDA-supported Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. According to the laboratory results, "Eggs of the pastured chickens contained 34% less cholesterol, 10% less fat, 40% more vitamin A, twice as much omega-6 fatty acid, and four times as much omega-3 fatty acid as the USDA standard." Pastured Poultry Products: Summary, SARE 1999 [3] While the bulk of a pet chickens' diet should be a balanced commercial mix, for household chickens "green feed" can be as simple as poison-free, short grass clippings from lawn mowing. Chickens will forage for chickweed and other plants, seeds, and insects.

Distinctive American varieties of chickens have been developed from these Asian breeds. Poultry fanciers began keeping these ornamental birds for exhibition, a practice that continues today. Individuals in rural communities commonly keep chickens for both ornamental and practical value.

Once a meat consumed only occasionally, the common availability and lower cost has made chicken a common meat product within developed nations. Growing concerns over the cholesterol content of red meat in the 1980s and 1990s further resulted in increased consumption of chicken.

Chickens are exposed to artificial light cycles to stimulate egg production year-round. In addition, it is a common practice to induce molting through manipulation of light and the amount of food they receive in order to further increase egg size and production.

In Europe, they are generally butchered after a single season. The laying period begins when the hen is about 1820 weeks old (depending on breed and season). Males of the egg-type breeds have little commercial value at any age, and all those not used for breeding (roughly fifty percent of all egg-type chickens) are killed soon after hatching. Such "day-old chicks" are sometimes sold as food for captive and falconers birds of prey.

In the twentieth century, it gradually moved closer to major cities to take advantage of lower shipping costs. This had the undesirable side effect of turning the chicken manure from a valuable fertilizer that could be used profitably on local farms to an unwanted byproduct. This trend may be reversing itself due to higher disposal costs on the one hand and higher fertilizer prices on the other, making farm regions attractive once more.

PETA and other groups have repeatedly conducted undercover investigations at chicken farms and slaughterhouses which they allege confirm their claims of cruelty.

Because beaks are sensitive, trimming them without anaesthesia is considered inhumane by some. It is also argued that the procedure causes life-long discomfort. Conditions in intensive chicken farms may be unsanitary, allowing the proliferation of diseases such as salmonella and E coli. Chickens may be raised in total darkness.Rough handling and crowded transport during various weather conditions and the failure of existing stunning systems to render the birds unconscious before slaughter have also been cited as welfare concerns.

Dr. Chris Evans of Macquarie University claims that their range of 20 calls, problem solving skills, use of representational signalling, and the ability to recognize each other by facial features demonstrate the intelligence of chickens. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/15/nhen15.xml In 2008, 9.08 billion chickens were slaughtered in the United States according to USDA data.

Irradiation has been proposed as a means of sterilizing chicken meat after butchering.

A chicken is tethered by the leg and kept present at the ceremony for its duration to ensure that any evil spirits present during the ceremony go into the chicken and not the family members present. The chicken is then taken home and returns to its normal life.

The meat is then donated to the poor. A woman brings a hen for the ceremony, while a man brings a rooster. Although not actually a sacrifice in the biblical sense, the death of the chicken reminds the penitent sinner that his or her life is in God's hands.

Also in Chinese religion, a cooked chicken as a religious offering is usually limited to ancestor veneration and worship of village deities. Vegetarian deities such as the Buddha are not one of the recipients of such offerings. Under some observations, an offering of chicken is presented with "serious" prayer (while roasted pork is offered during a joyous celebration). In Confucian Chinese Weddings, a chicken can be used as a substitute for one who is seriously ill or not available (e.g. sudden death) to attend the ceremony. A red silk scarf is placed on the chicken's head and a close relative of the absent bride/groom holds the chicken so the ceremony may proceed. However, this practice is rare today.

The poet Cratinus (mid-5th century BCE, according to the later Greek author Athenaeus) calls the chicken "the Persia alarm". In Aristophanes's comedy The Birds (414 BCE) a chicken is called "the Median bird", which points to an introduction from the East. Pictures of chickens are found on Greek red figure and black-figure pottery.

Chickens, together with dogs and pigs, were the domestic animals of the Lapita culture, the first Neolithic culture of Oceania.

The chickens were cared for by the pullarius, who opened their cage and fed them pulses or a special kind of soft cake when an augury was needed. If the chickens stayed in their cage, made noises ("occinerent"), beat their wings or flew away, the omen was bad; if they ate greedily, the omen was good.

It was renewed a number of times, but does not seem to have been successful. Fattening chickens with bread soaked in milk was thought to give especially delicious results. The Roman gourmet Apicius offers 17 recipes for chicken, mainly boiled chicken with a sauce. All parts of the animal are used: the recipes include the stomach, liver, testicles and even the pygostyle (the fatty "tail" of the chicken where the tail feathers attach).

For farming, native (Roman) chickens are to be preferred, or a cross between native hens and Greek cocks. Dwarf chickens are nice to watch because of their size but have no other advantages.

White chickens should be avoided as they are not very fertile and are easily caught by eagles or goshawks. One cock should be kept for five hens. In the case of Rhodian and Median cocks that are very heavy and therefore not much inclined to sex, only three hens are kept per cock. The hens of heavy fowls are not much inclined to brood; therefore their eggs are best hatched by normal hens. A hen can hatch no more than 15-23 eggs, depending on the time of year, and supervise no more than 30 hatchlings. Eggs that are long and pointed give more male, rounded eggs mainly female hatchlings.

Wheat itself should be avoided as it is harmful to the birds. Boiled ryegrass ( Lollium sp.) and the leaves and seeds of alfalfa ( Medicago sativa L.) can be used as well. Grape marc can be used, but only when the hens stop laying eggs, that is, about the middle of November; otherwise eggs are small and few. When feeding grape marc, it should be supplemented with some bran. Hens start to lay eggs after the winter solstice, in warm places around the first of January, in colder areas in the middle of February. Parboiled barley increases their fertility; this should be mixed with alfalfa leaves and seeds, or vetches or millet if alfalfa is not at hand. Free-ranging chickens should receive two cups of barley daily.

Araucanas, some of which are tailless and some of which have tufts of feathers around their ears, lay blue-green eggs. It has long been suggested that they predate the arrival of European chickens brought by the Spanish and are evidence of pre-Columbian trans-Pacific contacts between Asian or Pacific Oceanic peoples, particularly the Polynesians and South America. In 2007, an international team of researchers reported the results of analysis of chicken bones found on the Arauco Peninsula in south central Chile. Radiocarbon dating indicated that the chickens were Pre-Columbian, and DNA analysis showed that they were related to prehistoric populations of chickens in Polynesia.

Source: Wikipedia > Chicken