What is chicken?
Discussion
Bear with me on this one....
My daughter (12) has just informed me that 'chicken' is the name for a cooked 'hen' and that when you say 'look at that chicken in the farmyard' it is that same as saying 'look at that pork in the sty'.
I obviously researched this and could not get a satisfactory answer.
One answer I did get was the a chick was a baby hen and was called a chick-hen but the 'h' was dropped.
So, what should this bird be called, a hen is the female, a cock (cockerel) the male.
My daughter (12) has just informed me that 'chicken' is the name for a cooked 'hen' and that when you say 'look at that chicken in the farmyard' it is that same as saying 'look at that pork in the sty'.
I obviously researched this and could not get a satisfactory answer.
One answer I did get was the a chick was a baby hen and was called a chick-hen but the 'h' was dropped.
So, what should this bird be called, a hen is the female, a cock (cockerel) the male.
I've always understood it to be more of a generic term - borne out by this:
dictionary said:
a. The common domestic fowl (Gallus domesticus) or its young.
b. Any of various similar or related birds.
c. The flesh of the common domestic fowl.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/chicken (US based admittedly - don't have the Oxford on this machine)b. Any of various similar or related birds.
c. The flesh of the common domestic fowl.
BlackVanDyke said:
Is certainly true of some other food - cow/beef, pig/pork, and I think there are others too - IIRC it's Norman inherited snobbery, using the 'common' anglo-saxon words only for the animal and not for the meat?
But I'm not convinced about chicken!
I was lead to believe it was more that the animals where the meat name is bastardised French and the animal is bastardised Anglo Saxon it's because only the rich would eat the meat. But I'm not convinced about chicken!
cow - beef - beouf,
pig - pork - porc,
sheep - mutton - mouton etc.
Think of it as child v Women
Chicken = Young (Spring Chicken)
Hen = Old (Old Hen)
Chickens you eat will most likely be between 35 - 50 days old (Maybe 75+ if slow grown free range)
Hens that lay eggs start laying at around 18 weeks after they "mature" and are kept on until about 18mths old.
(Different breeds are used for eggs & meat production, some will convert the food they consume into becoming prolific egg layers the other breeds will convert it into meat)
Cattle
Heifers/Steers are prime beef - being prob less than 2yrs old & females that haven't produced a calf or males that have been castrated to prevent hormones tainting the meat.
Cows have all had calves at some point and are kept to produce either more calves or milk (different breeds for different things)
Sheep
Lambs v Ewes
Pigs
Piglets v Sows
(It is more than likely that the old females will enter the food chain at the end of their useful lives, however it will most likely be in the form of stock cubes/processed meats etc)
Chicken = Young (Spring Chicken)
Hen = Old (Old Hen)
Chickens you eat will most likely be between 35 - 50 days old (Maybe 75+ if slow grown free range)
Hens that lay eggs start laying at around 18 weeks after they "mature" and are kept on until about 18mths old.
(Different breeds are used for eggs & meat production, some will convert the food they consume into becoming prolific egg layers the other breeds will convert it into meat)
Cattle
Heifers/Steers are prime beef - being prob less than 2yrs old & females that haven't produced a calf or males that have been castrated to prevent hormones tainting the meat.
Cows have all had calves at some point and are kept to produce either more calves or milk (different breeds for different things)
Sheep
Lambs v Ewes
Pigs
Piglets v Sows
(It is more than likely that the old females will enter the food chain at the end of their useful lives, however it will most likely be in the form of stock cubes/processed meats etc)
Edited by AndyAudi on Sunday 15th April 11:33
h over there" - you would just call it a dog! She is right that hens are female chickens... but chicken just happens to be the word for the animal and the food make from it.Hymen said:
thehawk said:
The egg, living things are incapable of changing genetically during their life, hence a genetic change or mutation that results in a chicken would have had occurred in the egg.
But what laid the egg in the first place? Are you saying that a sparrow laid an egg with a genetic mutation and along came the chicken? What did the mutated one mate with to continue the population?The divide between evolving animals is not black and white, its shades of grey over a very long period.
Edited by 98elise on Thursday 19th April 13:09
let's not get into the chicken and egg thing! Clearly the egg came first, as exactly how someone else said - a being cannot change it's DNA after it has come into existence. At some point a non-chicken will have to have laid an egg containing a new being with a significant genetic mutation which would make it classed as a new species. Ergo this is now an egg containing a chicken (if not a chicken-egg, as such, being as it has not come from a chicken). At what point in history that occurred is something different, the sequence of events still stands.
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