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Did You Know?
Just like people live in families,chickens also have social structure. This is  called the “pecking order”. The pecking order decides which birds are dominant. Dominant birds can be mean to others. For example, they will pluck their feathers or take their food.  When the flock is bigger than about 15 chicken, the pecking order may become a problem because of fighting! This makes flock much less productive.








 Farming

People have raised chicken for thousands of years. Chicken farming began by individuals. For thousands of years families raised their own chicken for meat and eggs. Most common way of raising chicken was the family farm. While eggs were eaten daily, chicken meat was a treat. Historians who write about the life in the late 19th hundred America discovered that chicken was a Sunday meal and considered special. Throughout centuries people also made money from the chicken. They took their eggs and chicken meat to the market to trade for products they needed or sell  for money. So even early on, chicken started playing an important role in economy.

Family Chicken Farm in Croatia

In modern times, a lot about chicken farming has changed. Invention of refrigerator brought on a huge change because people were able to transport their product further. Customers could now by meat and eggs and store them for a longer time. Soon many family farms were replaced by a large commercial farms. These farms are built just to raise chicken. Often they are built for specific type of chicken. For example, some farms are built just to collect eggs and some produce broilers, ready for the dinner table. If you think about how much we eat chicken, you will understand how much chicken needs to be produced to meet demand. It would be impossible to do this with a small family farm.




While methods of farming have changed, chicken farming has been present since early mankind and it will probably be present as long as people love eggs McMuffins and chicken nuggets.