Chicken Wikipedia

It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is one of the most common and widespread domesticated animals in the world.

Inbreeding of White Leghorn chickens tends to cause inbreeding depression expressed as reduced egg number and delayed sexual maturity. When eggs are placed in a hypoxic environment, chicken embryos from these populations express much more hemoglobin than embryos from other chicken populations. 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. Wild junglefowl can fly, whereas domestic chickens and their flight muscles are too heavy to allow them to fly more than a short distance. Defrost the chicken in the fridge (it can take around 2 days), then allow it to stand uncovered out of the fridge for no more than half an hour before cooking.

• Reproduction declines with age, thought to be due to a decline in GnRH-I-N.
• Middle Eastern chicken remains go back to a little earlier than 2000 BC in Syria.
• Individual chickens dominate others, establishing a pecking order; dominant individuals take priority for access to food and nest sites.
• The chicken was the first bird species to have its genome sequenced.

Domestication and economic production

Value chickens for well under a fiver, free-range, organic, corn fed – there’s a cornucopia of options. BBC Food has hundreds of delicious chicken recipes from classic roast chicken to the ultimate chicken soup. In groups of male chicks, however, fights for dominance may continue into adulthood. The pecking order is established within groups of female chicks by the 10th week of life.

Herb butter roast chicken with miso onion gravy

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. Only hens that could no longer produce enough eggs were killed and sold for meat.

An early study proposed that a single domestication event of the red junglefowl in present-day Thailand gave rise to the modern chicken. 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. Under natural conditions, most birds lay only until a clutch is complete; they then incubate all the eggs.

Domestication and economic production

Chickens are social, inquisitive, intelligent birds, and many people find their behaviour entertaining. Keeping chickens as pets became increasingly popular in the 2000s among urban and suburban residents. The first pictures of chickens in Europe are found on Corinthian pottery of the 7th century BC.

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 npvip bet and food writers agree on is that a good-quality, free-range bird is vastly superior in flavour to a cheap factory-farmed bird.