Chicken Genetics

[phasianidae]

Amer gave a very good answer.

Chicken history and origins is very difficult. It's like human history but with far less documentation and 20 times as many generations in any given time frame. There is significant evidence for pre-columbian chickens in south and central america as well as the southwestern United States. The date for the domestication of chickens keeps getting pushed further into the past as new discoveries are made. I suspect that chickens were domesticated 12k - 20+k years ago.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole here is a good start: https://www.fiavinfo.eu/SummaG/www.summagallicana.it/chatteringongallus/index.html

 

[phasianidae]

Not to be argumentative, but.......

Chicken domestication 12-20K years ago would imply that it was happening before the Neolithic Revolution; before there was agriculture. and before there were permanent dwellings. People were nomadic hunters-gatherers.

The trouble with Plant's work is that it predates DNA analysis. Molecular biology has changed everything. To my knowledge, there is no concrete evidence of chickens in pre-Columbian America..

Discussion is good!

It will really come down to what interpretation you take on the ancient past. I'm highly convinced of the younger dryas impact hypothesis and of the work of those such as Dr. Robert M. Schoch. I believe there is compelling evidence for civilization prior to 12k years ago that was largely wiped out by a cataclysm and rising sea levels following the ice age.

How does this relate to chickens? Going off the what limited evidence there is (pottery, paintings, etc.) it seems like chickens were already highly diverse several thousand years ago, and had many or most of the current mutations (i.e. beards, polydactyl, comb types, colors, etc.). The very lack of writing about the creation or discovery of these new phenotypes interests me. It seems like chickens have come to us from the distant past. I will freely admit, it would be difficult to prove any of this. Chicken bones are not well represented in archeology, and unless someone finds an ancient chicken leg with a fifth toe how could one prove any of this?

The DNA is another tricky issue. I think we believe we know more than we really do. DNA analysis can never tell you what something is descended from, only how much similarity one organism shares with another. We don't even know if chickens are descended from Red Jungle Fowl (although they probably are, at least in part), only that they share a large percentage of their DNA with them. They certainly are not descended from the present-day populations, as this is a distant cousin relationship, not one of ancestor and descendant. So how similar are the present jungle fowl to those of the past? DNA also cannot rule out ancestry from any other species of fowl, extant or extinct. It could easily be that one of the extinct gallus species that died out in the ice age contributed to the development of the chicken but is now such a minor ancestor that their contribution is significant but not detectable.

The world is so full of information that there are infinite ways to interpret the evidence, and I'm sure my interpretation will continue to change over time. The only thing I know about chicken origins is that I don't know.

 

[11th Hour Poultry]

You have to purposely breed them for generations to get the traits you're looking for that will be passed every single time. Just throwing a bunch of random birds in a pen for 30 years might lead to a main similarity, but not a recognized breed that breeds true 100% of the time

This is a most interesting comment.

Fun fact, domesticated pigs will revert back to the feral-type hog that is plaguing the Southern United States and California. The domesticated pigs physically change into feral-type hogs when they break out of confinement. I think some people even believe there is a ninja gene in pigs that allows them to interchange from domesticated to feral and back the other way again.

The thing is, for pigs, this transformation starts happening in mere months rather than 30 years. Pigs are different than chickens, yes. But if todays chickens come from wild Jungle Fowl or other types of birds, my question is, can todays chickens revert back to wild-type (like pigs) if they were left alone to do their thing?

30 years is a very long time.

I wrote that this was a most interesting comment because the following questions crossed my mind.

1. Do chickens revert to wild type?

2. How many chicken breeds would need to be in the mix to be able to fully revert?

3. Which chicken breeds?

3. How many chickens per acre of pasture/wooded land would it take?

4. Will predators decimate the first generation?

To me, it's fascinating to imagine what would happen and what the resulting bird would look like even in just 5 years of being left alone in the wild. Maybe a game fence could give the first couple of generations a leg up.

Just for fun, if you had the desire, the land, and the resources, which chicken breeds would you include in this 5 year experiment if the end goal was to revert modern chickens into wild-type?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

This is a most interesting comment.

Fun fact, domesticated pigs will revert back to the feral-type hog that is plaguing the Southern United States and California. The domesticated pigs physically change into feral-type hogs when they break out of confinement. I think some people even believe there is a ninja gene in pigs that allows them to interchange from domesticated to feral and back the other way again.

The thing is, for pigs, this transformation starts happening in mere months rather than 30 years. Pigs are different than chickens, yes. But if todays chickens come from wild Jungle Fowl or other types of birds, my question is, can todays chickens revert back to wild-type (like pigs) if they were left alone to do their thing?

30 years is a very long time.

I wrote that this was a most interesting comment because the following questions crossed my mind.

1. Do chickens revert to wild type?

2. How many chicken breeds would need to be in the mix to be able to fully revert?

3. Which chicken breeds?

3. How many chickens per acre of pasture/wooded land would it take?

4. Will predators decimate the first generation?

To me, it's fascinating to imagine what would happen and what the resulting bird would look like even in just 5 years of being left alone in the wild. Maybe a game fence could give the first couple of generations a leg up.

Just for fun, if you had the desire, the land, and the resources, which chicken breeds would you include in this 5 year experiment if the end goal was to revert modern chickens into wild-type?

Phoenix hands down. The others, I'm not sure. My Phoenixes do well enough with most of my birds to make their own feral looking and acting offspring