Which is the most abundant bird species in the world? from Onur Türk's blog

​Chickens, by far. There are an estimated 52 billion chickens in the world: nine for every human being. 75 percent of these are for food, but for almost 3,000 years chickens were raised primarily for their eggs, and until the Romans arrived in England no one was known to eat chicken meat.

All chickens in the world are descended from a species of pheasant native to Thailand called the Red Jungle Fowl (Gallus gallus gallus). Its closest modern relative is the fighting cock.

Mass production of chickens and eggs began in the 1800s

Chicken meat for food began as a by-product of egg production. At first, only chickens that were old and not laying enough eggs were slaughtered and sold as meat. Chicken meat was still a luxury in the 1960s. Until the 1970s, chickens were no longer the meat of choice for most families.

Thanks to selective breeding and hormone therapy, it now takes less than forty days for a chicken to reach maturity; that's half the time it takes to grow naturally.

98 percent of all chickens (including organic) raised in the world are from breeds developed by three American companies. More than half of the world's "broilers" (food chickens) are from the Cobb 500 breed, which was bred by the Cobb Breeding Co. in the 1970s.

There were no chickens in the Americas

There were no chickens in the Americas before the 1500s. The Spanish were the first to bring chickens to the continent.

More than a third of all chickens in Britain are produced by a single Scottish company: Grampian Country Food Group. It supplies chicken to all supermarket chains and is a major donor to the Conservative Party. It has eight huge integrated broiler units, including one in Thailand, which produce 3.8 million chickens a week. Their slogan is: "Traditional Taste."

Most of the chickens sold for food are female. The males that are ready for food are castrated and called "castrated roosters". Today, castration is done chemically with hormones that rot the testicles.

The term used in the industry for a chicken's foot is "chicken claw". Most "chicken claws" in America are exported to China, even though three billion chickens already live there. ...

Chicken sounds in the world

Danish chickens go go-go-go,
German chickens go cack-cack,
Thai chickens go go go-go-go,
Dutch chickens go tok-tok,
Finnish and Hungarian chickens go kot-kot,
Turkish chickens go go go-go-go.
French chickens go kot-kot-kodat