One species, many races and traits throughout history

As with dogs and cats, there are many different breeds of chicken and these in turn come in different colors (so-called color varieties)

No one would harness a Pekingese to a sled and only a few like a drooling Great Dane on the couch.

Just as with dogs, you should also decide before you buy chickens what requirements you have of your new garden residents and which characteristics of which breed(s) best suit these ideas.

To give you a better overview, we have summarized the most important characteristics of a nice selection of chicken breeds.

History of the chicken species

It has been a long breeding journey to today’s more than 180 different European chicken breeds.

It is highly likely that the primitive chicken was brought to Europe in the Stone Age by the migrating group of Indo-Europeans from South-East Asia. Over the course of several millennia, this wild form developed into a domestic chicken that was less shy, better adapted to humans and less eager to fly. This happened in parallel in several cultures from China to Egypt.

However, domestic chickens only really became popular in Europe in Roman times, when they were kept on a large scale as a source of eggs and meat. There was even a Roman textbook on keeping chickens, which shows how important these animals were even then.

In the Middle Ages, chickens were already a typical sight in northern European agriculture. New chicken breeds, such as the silk hen, were also brought from China via trade routes.

Over the centuries, the animals developed into various old country chicken breeds depending on the region, which were then increasingly modified in the 19th century when animal exhibitions became fashionable. In some cases, new breeds were imported from Asia especially for this purpose. Breeding rare, impressive chicken breeds just for their looks was a big hit for quite a while, particularly in upmarket circles.

The more modern times

At the beginning of the 20th century, poultry breeders began crossing different chicken breeds with each other in order to increase either egg or meat production. This resulted in the meat and layer breeds we know today.

Two world wars, during which food had to be saved, caused the popularity of many chicken breeds to dwindle because too much feed often had to be put into the animals. Higher-yielding breeds prevailed, while lower-yielding breeds became rare or disappeared completely.

In the 1960s, the development of the hybrid chicken in the USA was the poultry industry’s big hit. Since then, more and more hybrids have entered the market. Not only in the poultry industry, but also on normal farms, there are almost no “old” breeds left. Only enthusiasts, hobbyists and breeders preserve old bloodlines. Only in recent years have old dual-purpose breeds slowly come back into fashion among organic farmers.

This unfortunate development has meant that all chickens look the same to the average consumer today. They only know the brown or white hybrids artificially bred by large industrial farms.