Birds Posters
Chickens
The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl.
As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird.
Humans keep chickens primarily as a source of food, consuming both their meat and their eggs.
Recent evidence suggests that domestication of the chicken was already under way in Thailand, Vietnam and the South East Asian jungles over 10,000 years ago,
and spread into neighboring regions to the east such as China, and towards the west in India where it was conventionally thought to have been domesticated.
From India the domesticated fowl made its way to the Persianized kingdom of Lydia in western Asia Minor, and domestic fowl were imported to Greece by the fifth century BC.
Fowl had been known in Egypt since the 18th Dynasty, with the "bird that lays every day" having come to Egypt from the land between Syria and Shinar, Babylonia, according to the annals of Tutmose III.
In the UK and Ireland adult male chickens are primarily known as cocks, whereas in America, Canada and Australia they are more commonly called roosters.
Males under a year old are cockerels.
Castrated roosters are called capons (surgical and chemical castration are now illegal in some parts of the world).
Females over a year old are known as hens, and younger females are pullets.
In Australia and New Zealand (also sometimes in Britain), there is a generic term chook to describe all ages and both sexes.
Babies are called chicks, and the meat is called chicken.
"Chicken" originally referred to chicks, not the species itself. The species as a whole was then called domestic fowl, or just fowl.
This use of "chicken" survives in the phrase "Hen and Chickens", sometimes used as a British public house or theatre name, and to name groups of one large
and many small rocks or islands in the sea, see for example Hen and Chicken Islands).
Chickens are omnivores. In the wild, they often scratch at the soil to search for seeds, insects and even larger animals such as lizards or young mice.