A coworker just told me that female chickens (hens) taste very different than male chickens. She’s not talking about Cornish Game hens or anything-- simply the male and female chicken. She said that in Spain if you order “pollo” you get male chicken and if you order “gallena” you get female chicken. This got me thinking-- when I go to KFC or buy chicken breasts at the grocery store, what is it I’m most likely eating-- male or female chicken?
You’re almost always going to be eating a male, and a young one at that. Females are kept as layers, and used to be sold as stewers back in the day after they were washed up as layers, but I haven’t seen a real old tough hen stewer in years.
waves fist
Darn you, Contrapuntal! I was sure you were going to link to an on-line order form or something! I got so excited for a minute at the idea of real chicken stew! 
Huh. I remember from my days of high school spanish that “gallina” is the Spanish word for a living chicken, one that is up and walking around, not remotely ready to be eaten (the same way we might say “cow” rather than “beef”). So, I wouldn’t try it, unless you want some funny looks and a bundle of angry feathers with your pico de gallo.
To be specific, if the females are kept, they are kept as breeders, to produce more fertilized eggs. They are NOT kept as ‘layers’ to produce the (unfertilized) eggs that you buy in the grocery store.
Currently, chicken breed have specialized to the point that there are separate ‘laying’ and ‘meat’ breeds of chickens. (Just like there have long been separate breeds of ‘dairy’ and ‘beef’ cattle.)
Intact roosters don’t tolerate competition, so are difficult to raise, as they must be isolated from each other. Roosters are thus normally butchered prior to sexual maturity.
Note I said intact. As with bulls vs. Steers, castration solves the aggressive behaviour issue.
A castrated rooster is often denoted as capon on a menu.
While commercial practice has specialized breeds for meat vs. layers, there are plenty of people who keep thier own chickens, and breeds that are suitable for both purposes.
I have been told this by actual chicken-farming people.
How many are kept? It should be a somewhat small fraction of the population. How many eggs do you get out of a chicken before it is not producing well enough? 100, 1000? If the male to female chicken ratio if a chicken will produce 100 eggs only on female is needed to replace the breeder that leaves the other 49 females to be sold as meat. So 50 males and 49 females. If the number of eggs that a hen produces goes up the ratio gets even closer.
A gallina is a hen, and a gallo is a rooster. Pollitos are baby chickens, and pollo is the food. In English I might buy a hen to make chicken, but in my (limited) experience, I’ve never heard a Spanish-speak say they would buy a gallina or gallo to make pollo. I suppose one who kept chicken might say they’re going out to kill the gallina or gallo, though. In one of the chicken chains I’ve been to, the men’s room is labelled “pollos” and the ladies’ is labelled “pollas” (but that’s not really a word).
In the absence of context and just out there by itself, this sentence is hilarious. It’d be a great pat answer for a variety of questions.
In Germany the male chicken is called “Hahn”, while the female is called
Huhn". The female is being used in soups, while the young male ends up in our Rotisseries.
I thought that newly hatched male chicks, if they are from a breed specializing in egg laying, are usually (euphemism) destroyed immediately after hatching.
Based on my mom’s hens, probably somewhere between 500 and 700. Each hen lays close to one egg per day in its prime, and that prime seems to last a bit less than two years.
We have some local farmers around here who sell eggs and “stewing hens” which are tough as leather, but make divine broth and chicken soup.
That matches up pretty well for Wikipedia’s info for laying hens:
Laying hens (selected for egg production) are usually Leghorns. I’d imagine that with a broiler strain selected for rapid, “meaty” growth the egg production is much lower.
With a little luck, gazpacho may even see that reply.
Meat birds don’t even make it to sexual maturity. Cornish Crosses are butchered at 6 to 8 weeks old. Both males and females are raised, and there is no difference in taste.
There’s a lot of ignorance in this thread. Most mass chicken producers will grow and process both male and female chickens for meat processing. There is not enough demand for layers (non fertilized egg production) /breeders (fertilized egg production for hatcheries) to consume all of the female chickens that are hatched. Layers and breeders will live for about 5 years + or -. In a breeding house there are about 20 hens for every rooster. At the end of the breeder/layers lives they get processed as well as “spent hens”.
Chicks raised for meat processing are normally separated by sex at birth before being placed in a grower house. This is because it has been determined that the chickens will put on weight faster when separated by sex than if they are grown together. It takes on average about 7 weeks from hatching to being processed for meat.
The odds of the chicken you buy in the grocery store being male or female, is maybe just slightly higher of being male, due to the just slightly larger number of female chicks that are used to layers and breeders as opposed to roosters.