Before the Backyard – a concise history of the chicken part 4

Last time we learnt how the chicken played what could quite well have been a pivotal role in the Roman Empire. If you think on it, how many times did the Pulliarus, the keeper of the sacred chickens cast down some food, open the cage of the sacred chickens and then take the auspices. Divining …

Before the Backyard – a concise history of the chicken part 3

Over the last couple of posts we’ve being developing a picture of the ‘chicken’ in its earliest forms. We’ve looked at what its ancestors ‘in the wild’ were and where geographically it is likely to have originated from. We’ve considered how it became associated with humankind and why, and yet so far we haven’t really …

Before the Backyard – a concise history of the chicken part 2

Last time we took an overview of the early evolution of the chicken as we know it today however this time we will take a step backwards. Chickens weren’t always chickens, at least not the way we think of and see chickens today or even a couple of centuries ago. The humble chicken today is …

Before the Backyard – a concise history of the chicken part 1

The origins and early evolution of the domestic chicken  Ever since I first got involved with chickens I’ve been fascinated by them, not just the chicken we see today, but also how we got to the chicken we see today. I knew from my own relatively short history on planet earth that chicken breeds and the concept of ‘chicken’ to the …