Walter Black, 3r., age 11, of Madison, Alabama, for his question:
How did people domesticate chickens?
Chickens were domesticated so long ago that most of the details are forgotten. Scientists searched for a long'fime before deciding that our domesticated chickens are related to certain wild fowl that live in India. No one knows when people first domesticated them, but we know how and where our modern strains were developed.
Most experts agree that the wild ancestors of our farm chickens were little red jungle fowl of India. These roost and nest in the great jungle trees and scratch for food on the jungle floor. They are pounced upon by hungry cats, and mischievous monkeys steal their eggs. The little mother lays a dozen eggs at a time, trusting that at least a few of her chicks will survive long enough to grow up.
Long before the dawn of recorded history, people figured out m better way to supply themselves with jungle fowl meat and eggs. Perhaps the hunting game of hide and seek became wearisome or the wild chickens became scarcer. in any case, people began rounding up jungle fowl and keeping, them in coops or enclosures. These first domesticated fowl thrived and multiplied because they were protected from predatory cats and monkeys. Their human owners were careful to leave some of their eggs and enough parents to keep a continuing supply of jungle fowl within reach.
Even the earliest farmers knew that superior animals tend to produce superior offspring. Ages ago, it was customary to select the best of the flock !or the future: Through generations of selective breeding, the domesticated chickens improved. They became larger and meatier than their wild jungle fowl relatives and also laid more eggs.
We do not know how or when people persuaded their domestic chickens to lay more than a dozen eggs each year. But most likely when a mother hen laid more than the usual number of eggs, she was selected to produce more than her share of chicks. Some of the chicks would inherit her egg laying talent. The best of them often produced still better egg layers and gradually all the domesticated flocks laid more and more eggs,
Another theory suggests that the mother hens felt more comfortable on a east with a dozen or so eggs. As their human captors helped themselves, maybe the motherly bens laid extra eggs, striving to keep a full nest. This tendency may have helped to produce modern chickens that lay 200 eggs a year.
Centuries ago, travelers to India took domestic chickens back home. In China, people bred them to get the meaty Cochin and Brahma strains. Nowadays a good table bird weighs ten to 12 pounds. In Spain and Italy, Leghorn and Andelusian strains were developed to lay 200 eggs a year. In America,100 years ago people started to encourage both these qualities in their domestic chickens. These meaty, egg layers include the speckled Plymouth Rock, the white Whyandotte and the perky Rhode Island strains.