Chicken

Chicken is the most popular domesticated fowl in the world with a total population of more than 19 billion in 2011. Even if some people keep it at home as a pet, but generally it is considered to be livestock because most people keep it as a source of food for its meat and eggs. The ability of female chicken, usually called as “hen”, to lay egg every day, give them the title “bird that gives birth every day” since the mid-15th century BC. Chickens are omnivore. They consume almost anything, starting from worm, insect, seeds, rice to lizard and young mice. In their natural habitat, chickens can live up to ten years.

Chicken have several nickname that come from several places. The name “cocks” refer to the adult male chickens with age of more than one year. This nickname is used widely in the UK and Ireland. Meanwhile, the same chicken is called “roosters” in United States, Australia and Canada. Another nickname is used when we want to address to male chickens with age less than a year, and the nickname is “cockerels”. As the world develop, some parts of the world allow the implementation of surgical or chemical castration to the male chicken. A castrated roosters are called “capons”. As for the female chicken, there are two nickname for them, they are “hen” for the adult female c
hicken, and “pullets” for the young female chicken.

Chickens have two legs with four fingers on each of it. They also have two wings on each side of the body. All of their body is covered with plumage. Both adult male and female chicken have additional flesh on their head called a comb and also under their head called wattles. There are several difference between male and female chickens, some of them are: there are an additional part on each of rooster’s leg called as the spur (it is their weapon during a fight), rooster’s plumage usually looks shiny and has a brighter color, roosters usually have long tail.