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Chickans

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Submitted By SuzannevdB
Words 423
Pages 2
Dis is a chikan:

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, with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003,[1] 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 meatand their eggs.
The earliest known domestication occurred in Northern China 8,000 BCE determined from archaeological chicken bones.[2]Previously genetic studies have pointed to multiple maternal origins in Southeast, East, and South Asia, but with the cladefound in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa originating in the Indian subcontinent. From India, the domesticated chicken was imported to Lydia in western Asia Minor, and to Greece by the fifth century BC.[3] Fowl had been known in Egypt since the mid-15th century BC, with the "bird that gives birth every day" having come to Egypt from the land between Syria and Shinar, Babylonia, according to the annals of Thutmose III.[4][5][6]

n the UK and Ireland adult male chickens over the age of one year are primarily known as cocks, whereas in America, Australia and Canada they are more commonly called roosters. Males less than a year old are cockerels.[7] 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 as pullets[8] although in the egg-laying industry, a pullet becomes a hen when she begins to lay eggs at 16 to 20 weeks of age. In Australia and New Zealand (also sometimes in Britain), there is a generic term chook /ˈtʃʊk/ to describe all ages and both sexes.[9] The young are called chicks and the meat is called chicken.
"Chicken" originally referred to chicks, not the species itself.[citation needed] 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). The word "chicken" is sometimes erroneously construed to mean females exclusively, despite the term "hen" for females being in wide circulation.
In the Deep South of the United States chickens are also referred to by the slang term yardbird.[10]

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