“So help me, I thought turkeys could fly!” -Les Nesman.
I assume it was one of the varieties of animals originally domesticated - like horses, cows, dogs, and cats, it won the “domesticate me” sweepstakes somewhere in the world and was the most economical and versatile of the choices. As we see with horses - once an animal proved its usefulness it spread across the world pretty quickly.
For a number of reasons others enumerated above, it made for a good choice. To some extent self-feeding while cows or horses needed larger grassland areas, didn’t fly away easily, grew fast, provided regular egg meals until it was time to eat, adapted to a number of environments with proper care, not too big or too small, etc.
I’m not a survivalist gourmet, but it seems to me bird meat has a different texture than mammal - where hams of chunks of beef could be preserved, turned into sausage, etc - birds tended to be eaten whole. So having a bird was a treat, as it meant that a large amount of meat would be consumed at once, and it made no sense to kill one that still made eggs. But it’s still cheaper than killing a cow or pig; so a roast chicken or a roast beef was the extravagant Sunday dinner in our tradition.
This doesn’t ring true at all. While they weren’t raised in large flocks, every smallholder, peasant and even many town dwellers would have had at least a few chickens in the backyard. Chickens can be raised in a small space and fed on scraps, a little supplemental grain, and whatever they can scrounge for themselves and they will turn that meager input into eggs & meat. They would have provided a large portion of these people’s protein intake in times when meat was expensive. As mentioned, mainly as eggs but also meat when the hens stopped laying and any young roosters that weren’t destined to be kept as breeding stock.
Forgot to add while it didn’t raise big individual sums of money, surplus egg (& cream) was sold for the farm wives spending money well into the 20th Century.
Fifty years ago any high-end restaurant had Long Island duck a l’orange on the menu. Of course that was probably because I came from Long Island, but as a kid it was exciting to see it when we travelled out of the area. Long Island produced around 7.5 million ducks a year in 1960; I don’t know if any duck farms are still operating.
I’d assume roughly half the chickens born in any hatch to become egg layers were male. I don’t think they kept all the males around. I’m sure a 10 to 1 or higher ratio would have been used. So I’d think they either killed a lot of the young males or raised them a bit then ate them. Or am I wrong? Which would have been more efficient?
Yes, and chickens will also rustle up some of their own grub when they are outside. They pick up bugs, seeds and grass. They are efficient converters of feed too. They are protein factories.
Yes, but this includes several hundred years of breeding chickens to produce more eggs. Turkeys are primarily bred for meat; egg-laying is not important to breeders.
Modern chickens, in fact, are being bred into divergent groups; egg-laying chickens & meat chickens. (Just as has happened in cattle, with dairy & meat cattle herds. Almost all domesticated animals or crops have been bred for specialized purposes. That’s almost a sure sign of domestication.)
No, you don’t keep all the roosters. I’m not sure what the ideal ratio is, but if you keep the young roosters in with the flock, they will not only fight with each other, they’ll fight over the hens, which can injure the hens and which definitely stresses them out, lowering egg production.
If you’re trying to grow all the roosters to adulthood, they have to each be caged individually, and they don’t like that, especially if they can hear that there are hens around. They get testy.
Ducks require a nearby water source to swim around in, which chickens don’t. This is why they make sense in southern China, since farmers there were flooding their fields anyway to grow rice. (And likewise in other rice growing parts of the world like Madagascar, Vietnam, etc.). IIRC they’re hardier and more disease resistant than chickens, so if you do have water around there’s something to be said for raising ducks.
Geese can also live off grass, which chickens can’t, so there would be an advantage to geese as well.
