Chicken Evolution

[ClissAT]

Here's a bit of fun.
Its a picture I recently received in an email from a guy who runs a chicken breeding business in Victoria, Australia.

It is correct in that chickens are evolved down the reptile line a long time ago.
It is also correct that reptiles (lizards & dinosaurs) were laying eggs a long time before some of them grew feathers & took to the skies....& then some lost the use of their wings & began running around the undergrowth.
So to answer that apparently unanswerable question " which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
Of course it was the egg which came first, millions of years before the chicken came along.

 

[DarrenP]

Haha, thanks for clearing that up, ClissAT.

 

[Mark]

We're technically eating dinosaur eggs

 

[Ash]

Especially with all the steroids these birds are being fed - the size of eggs these days is unprecedented.

 

[ClissAT]

I think that might be more down to selective breeding than steroids, Ash.
My white hen laid 90gram eggs & I can assure you I didn't feed her steroids!
She/he (named Julian because she acted very secretive & skittish like him) was a Bond meat bird egg producer that should not have been let out of the barn, but things happen.
Her off spring would normally became meat chickens so they started out bigger anyway, therefore the eggs were bigger.
Nowadays they are crossing the meat bird genetics into the egg laying genetics to get birds that lay bigger eggs.