Chicken fajita recipe the culinary use of chickens, see Chicken as food. Male and female chicken sitting together.

Chickens are one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, with a total population of 23. 7 billion as of 2018, up from more than 19 billion in 2011. In 2011 a study in genetic and archaeological evidence conclude that the origin of the modern-day chicken is from Southeast Asia. Dunghill fowl: a chicken with mixed parentage from different domestic varieties. Pullet: a young female chicken less than a year old.

In the poultry industry, a pullet is a sexually immature chicken less than 22 weeks of age. In fact, chicken was originally a term only for an immature, or at least young, bird. In older sources, chicken as a species were typically referred to as common fowl or domestic fowl. Chick is then rarely used to mean chicken, but is mainly used in Merriam-Webster’s “Sense 1b” viz.