My latest acrylic painting is of a rooster on a fence at sunrise. Young female chicks are called pullets, young males are called cockerels, adult males are called cocks or roosters, and adult females are called hens. A genetic female chicken with a male phenotype is called a pollard. Broiler is a meat chicken approximately 2.27 kg (5 pounds) live weight at slaughter and a roaster is a meat chicken 2.72 to 3.63 kg (6 to 8 pounds) live weight at slaughter. Chooks are the popular Australian term for chickens. A capon is a castrated male. Alektorophobia is the fear of chickens. The pecking order is a descriptive term for the dominance hierarchical system of the social organization in chickens. Chickens that have no feathers growing from their shanks are referred to as clean legged, whereas feather-legged breeds, such as Cochins or Brahmas, do have feathers. The crest refers to the puff of feathers on the heads of breeds such as Houdan, Silkie, or Polish, and is also called a “topknot.”
Feathers that curl rather than lay flat are referred to as frizzle feathers, and this term is also a common show category. The saddle is the part of a chicken’s back just before the tail. The shank is the part of a chicken’s leg between the foot and ankle, called the tarsometatarsus. A sex feather is a hackle, saddle, or tail feather that is rounded in a hen but usually pointed in a rooster. Sickles are the long, curved tail feathers of some roosters. Turkeys have a snood, which is a long fleshy appendage attached to the face behind the nares. The snood has no known use but can be raised and lowered at will.
