Hen

A jungle bird on the farm

The domestic chicken descends mainly from the red junglefowl of South and Southeast Asia, domesticated perhaps 3,500–4,000 years ago, at first possibly for cockfighting and ritual rather than food. Today there are more than 20 billion chickens alive at any time, making them the most numerous bird on Earth. Village hens in Poland may be mixed breeds that roam the yard; commercial laying hens are specialised hybrids, often brown or white, weighing around 1.5–2 kg.

You would see colours well, including ultraviolet, and have nearly panoramic vision. You would scratch the ground with strong feet to uncover seeds, insects, worms and grit, which you swallow to help your gizzard grind food.

Pecking order and dust baths

The phrase pecking order comes from chickens: Norwegian zoologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe described their dominance hierarchy in the early 1920s. Each hen knows which birds she can displace from food and which she must avoid. Hens also have strong behavioural needs: they dust-bathe in dry soil to clean their feathers, perch at night and seek a secluded nest to lay.

A modern laying hen produces roughly 300 eggs a year, far more than her wild ancestor, which lays about a dozen a year. Without a rooster the eggs are simply unfertilised. Hens communicate with dozens of distinct calls, including different alarm calls for aerial and ground predators.

Where your life might take place

In the EU, battery cages have been banned since 2012, but enriched cages are still allowed, as are barn, free-range and organic systems; the first digit printed on an egg tells you which: 0 organic, 1 free range, 2 barn, 3 cage. Commercial laying hens are usually slaughtered at around 18 months, when laying slows. A backyard hen might live 5–8 years or more, at risk from foxes, martens, hawks and avian influenza. Broiler chickens, bred for meat, live only about six weeks.