50 Fun Facts About Poultry

Despite the Kentucky in its name, the first KFC franchise was opened by restaurateur Pete Harman in which US state?

Utah got Kentucky Fried Chicken first, when Harland Sanders licensed his recipe to a friend in South Salt Lake. That friend later introduced the cardboard bucket.

Which Founding Father wrote to his daughter that the turkey was a more respectable bird than the bald eagle?

Benjamin Franklin was criticising the eagle on the crest of the Society of the Cincinnati, and he never proposed the turkey as a national symbol. That part of the story is a myth.

Domestic turkeys descend from birds first tamed in which country, before the Spanish took them to Europe?

Mexico is where ancient Mesoamericans first domesticated the bird, prizing its feathers for decoration as well as its meat and eggs.

Which amino acid is popularly, though wrongly, blamed for the drowsiness that follows a big Thanksgiving turkey dinner?

Tryptophan is no more plentiful in turkey than in other poultry. The sleepiness is more likely caused by a heavy meal rich in carbohydrates.

Mike the Headless Chicken, a Colorado rooster beheaded in 1945, survived for roughly how long afterwards?

18 months went by before Mike died, because the axe had left most of his brain stem intact. His owner fed him milk and water through an eyedropper and toured him in sideshows.

According to legend, the honking of sacred geese saved which ancient city from a night attack by Gauls?

Rome was spared because geese sacred to the goddess Juno cackled as the attackers climbed the Capitoline Hill, waking the defenders when the guards and dogs had heard nothing.

Deep-fried chicken wings tossed in hot sauce take their name from which New York city, home of the Anchor Bar?

Buffalo credits Teressa Bellissimo with first serving the wings at her family's bar in 1964, and the city declared an official Chicken Wing Day in 1977.

Which flightless bird, farmed for meat, leather and feathers, lays the largest egg of any living bird?

Ostrich eggs weigh about 1.4 kg, over twenty times as much as a hen's egg. Measured against the size of the mother, though, they are the smallest eggs of any bird.

The furcula, a forked bone formed from a bird's fused collarbones, is better known at the dinner table by what name?

Wishbone pulling for luck grew out of a much older habit of telling fortunes with the forked bone of a goose, a custom recorded since the late Middle Ages.

Which everyday phrase for a social hierarchy was coined by a Norwegian zoologist who watched hens rank themselves?

Pecking order began as the German word Hackordnung in Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe's 1921 study of hens, and it only entered English in 1927.

What is the proper name for an adult male duck, a word shared with a famous Elizabethan sea captain?

Drake plumage is often showy in northern species, but the males moult it in summer and take on a drab, female-like coat known as eclipse plumage.

Which word for a male goose also appears in an informal expression meaning to take a look at something?

Gander shares an ancient Germanic root with the word goose itself, and when the two are paired, goose means the female alone.

What is the name for a rooster castrated to improve its meat, a practice recorded as early as 162 BC?

Capon rearing took off in Rome after a law of 162 BC banned the fattening of hens to save grain. Farmers castrated roosters instead, which doubled the birds' size.

Baby chickens are chicks and baby geese are goslings, but what is a newly hatched turkey called?

Poult is the usual word, though turkeyling is also heard. Adult males have regional names too: toms in North America, stags in Britain and Ireland.

Which term describes a female chicken less than a year old, not yet counted as a fully grown hen?

Pullet has a stricter meaning in the poultry industry, where it describes a sexually immature bird under 22 weeks of age.

Because birds have no teeth, which muscular organ grinds a chicken's food with the help of swallowed grit?

Gizzard walls are thick muscle, and the organ can pass food back and forth with the true stomach until the swallowed stones have ground it fine.

What is the name of the fleshy red crest on top of a chicken's head, usually larger on roosters?

Comb tissue is edible, and Italian cooks simmer it with chicken livers and unlaid eggs in a traditional sauce called cibreo.

What is the fleshy flap that dangles over a male turkey's beak, which hens prefer to be long?

Snood length carries weight with other males as well: in face-offs, a male turkey defers to a rival whose flap is longer than his own.

Which wild bird of Southeast Asia is the main ancestor of the domestic chicken?

Red junglefowl can still fly, while their farmyard descendants have grown too heavy to stay airborne for more than a short distance.

On restaurant menus, squab is the meat of which young bird, usually killed before it is four weeks old?

Pigeon chicks must be fed by both parents, unlike other poultry, so squab farmers keep bonded breeding pairs that can each raise about 15 young a year.

Which American chicken breed, developed in New England in the 1800s, is the official state bird of its namesake state?

Rhode Island Red hens were bred to supply both meat and eggs, and the state marked the breed's centenary in 1954 by raising a monument to it at a farm in Little Compton.

Which prolific layer of white eggs takes its English name from the Tuscan port of Livorno?

Leghorn is the old English name for Livorno, the port that shipped the first birds to North America. A good hen lays about 280 eggs a year.

Which word for a miniature chicken or duck comes from the name of a seaport in western Java?

Bantam was where European sailors restocked with live fowl for long voyages, and the small local chickens they bought gave their name to every miniature variety.

Which chicken breed has fluffy plumage that feels like fur, along with black skin and five toes on each foot?

Silkie hens are so keen to sit on a nest that keepers use them to hatch the eggs of other breeds. Marco Polo described a furry chicken on his travels in Asia.

Which chicken breed from Chile, sometimes tailless and ear-tufted, is famous for laying blue-shelled eggs?

Araucana hens are among very few that lay blue eggs, and the American Easter egger hybrids that lay blue or green ones descend from them.

Which duck had already been domesticated by Native Americans when Columbus arrived, despite carrying an Old World name?

Muscovy ducks are native from Texas south to Argentina, and the name may come from their musky smell, since the species did not come from Russia.

Which wild duck, whose males have glossy green heads, is the ancestor of nearly all domestic duck breeds?

Mallard ducks breed so freely with their farmyard descendants that escaped domestic birds are now diluting the wild gene pool.

Which wild goose, already kept as a farm bird in ancient Egypt, is the ancestor of most European farmyard goose breeds?

Greylag geese appear as farmyard birds in Egyptian paintings from about 1360 BC, while the domestic geese of eastern Asia descend from a different species, the swan goose.

Which white meat duck was founded in America on just four birds that survived an 1873 sea voyage?

Pekin ducks displaced the dark-feathered Cayuga as the favourite meat bird because any white fluff left on a plucked carcass is much harder to see.

Which duck breed, noted for its egg production, stands erect like a penguin and does not waddle?

Indian Runner ducks cannot fly and get about by running, and despite the name they were bred on Lombok, Java and Bali, far from India.

Which French delicacy is made from the liver of a duck or goose fattened by force-feeding, a practice called gavage?

Foie gras means fat liver, and the force-feeding behind it is far older than France itself: Egyptians were fattening birds this way by 2500 BC.

Which French method, a speciality of Gascony, salts duck legs and then cooks them slowly in their own fat?

Confit is a centuries-old way of preserving meat: once cooked, the legs can be stored completely submerged in the fat.

Which French dish, cooked twice on television by Julia Child, braises chicken with lardons, mushrooms and Burgundy?

Coq au vin means rooster with wine, because slow braising was the way to soften a tough old bird. Most cooks now use an ordinary chicken.

Which Louisiana dish, promoted on air by John Madden at Thanksgiving, stuffs three boned birds inside one another?

Turducken packs a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, and Madden once sawed through one with his bare hand, live in the commentary booth, to show viewers the layers.

Which European capital gives its name to a breaded chicken fillet rolled around a core of cold butter?

Kyiv, long spelled Kiev in English, lent its name to a dish descended from an older cutlet whose elaborate stuffings were later replaced by plain butter.

Jerk chicken, seasoned with a fiery mix of allspice and Scotch bonnet peppers, comes from which Caribbean country?

Jamaica owes the technique to its indigenous Taíno people, and it was adopted by the Maroons who settled among them in the 17th century.

Hot chicken, fried and then coated in a cayenne paste, is the signature dish of which Tennessee city?

Nashville traces the dish to the family behind Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, and the city now holds a festival and cooking competition in its honour.

Chicken Marengo, sautéed with garlic and tomato, is named after a battle won in Italy by which French leader?

Napoleon supposedly ate it on the battlefield, cooked from foraged scraps, but that tale is probably a myth. A Paris restaurant chef is the likelier inventor.

What Yiddish name is given to rendered chicken or goose fat, a staple of traditional Ashkenazi Jewish cooking?

Schmaltz picked up a second meaning in American English, where it became slang for gushing sentimentality in music and art.

Which term describes a chicken whose backbone has been removed so that it can be opened out flat for grilling?

Spatchcock can also name the bird itself once it has been prepared, and cooks usually reserve the method for smaller birds.

Which long-tailed game bird, introduced from Asia for hunting, is the official state bird of South Dakota?

Pheasant only took hold in America after a large release in Oregon's Willamette Valley in 1881, and South Dakota made the Asian import its state bird in 1943.

The Glorious Twelfth of August opens the British shooting season for which bird of the heather moors?

Red grouse cannot legally be shot on a Sunday in England, so in years when the twelfth falls on one the season opens a day late.

Which game bird is the gift on the first day in the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas?

Partridge nests are on the ground, which is why some scholars think the tree in the carol is a garbled echo of perdrix, the French word for the bird.

The word for a concealed military marksman comes from the difficulty of hunting which wading bird?

Snipe fly so erratically that hitting one took real skill, and sniper originally meant an expert hunter before it came to mean a hidden sharpshooter.

Which bacterium, often spread by contaminated poultry and eggs, is named in honour of an American veterinarian?

Salmonella honours Daniel Salmon, though the first strain was actually discovered by his research assistant, Theobald Smith.

Which twisted strand of tissue, named from the Greek for hailstone, anchors the yolk in the middle of an egg?

Chalaza strands come in pairs in most bird eggs, yet reptile eggs have none, and botanists use the same word for part of a plant's ovule.

What is the name for shining a bright light through an egg's shell to check its quality or a growing embryo?

Candling takes its name from the candles that first supplied the light, and the egg industry still uses the technique to assess eggs sold for eating.

A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, but which word describes a flock of them in flight?

Skein is one of several terms for airborne geese, which can also be called a team or a wedge. A tight bunch flying close together is a plump.

Which turkey breed, the most widely used in commercial farming, can be unable to breed without human help?

Broad Breasted White turkeys were bred for such large breasts and short breastbones that natural mating can fail. The bird pardoned at the White House is usually one.

Which US president made the Thanksgiving turkey pardon a permanent White House ritual in his first year in office?

George H. W. Bush made it permanent in 1989, two years after Ronald Reagan had first floated a turkey pardon as a joke to deflect awkward press questions.