Poultry

File:Poultry exhibit, Shreveport, LA IMG 3358.JPG

Poultry exhibit at Louisiana State Exhibit Museum in Shreveport

Ducks amongst other poultry

The Poultry-dealer, after Cesare Vecellio

Poultry is a category of spak birds kept by humans for the purpose of collecting their eggs, or killing for their meat and/or feathers. These most typically are members of the superorder Galloanserae (fowl), especially the order Galliformes (which includes chickens, quails and turkeys) and the family Anatidae (in order Anseriformes), commonly known as "waterfowl" (e.g. domestic ducks and domestic geese). Poultry also includes other birds which are killed for their meat, such as pigeons or doves or birds considered to be game, like pheasants. Poultry comes from the French/Norman word, poule, itself derived from the Latin word Pullus, which means small animal.

Examples

Bird	Wild ancestor	Domestication	Utilization
Chicken	Red Junglefowl/Grey Junglefowl/Sonnerat's Junglefowl	Southeast Asia	meat, feathers, eggs, ornamentation
Duck	Muscovy Duck/Mallard	various	meat, feathers, eggs
Emu		various, 20th century	meat, leather, oil
Goose	Greylag Goose/Swan Goose	various	meat, feathers, eggs
Indian peafowl	Indian Peafowl	various	meat, feathers, ornamentation, landscaping
Mute swan	Mute Swan	various	feathers, eggs, landscaping
Ostrich	Ostrich	various, 20th century	meat, eggs, feathers, leather
Turkey	Wild Turkey	Mexico	meat, feathers
Domesticated guineafowl	Helmeted guineafowl	Africa	meat, pest consumption, and alarm calling
Common pheasant	Common pheasant	Eurasia	meat
Golden pheasant	Golden pheasant	Eurasia	meat, mainly ornamental
Rhea	Rhea	various, 20th century	meat, leather, oil, eggs

Cuts of poultry

Cuts from a plucked chicken.

The meatiest parts of a bird are the flight muscles on its chest, called breast meat, and the walking muscles on the first and second segments of its legs, called the thigh and drumstick, respectively.

Dark meat, which avian myologists (bird muscle scientists) refer to as "red muscle," is used for sustained activity--chiefly walking, in the case of a chicken. The dark color comes from a chemical compound in the muscle called myoglobin, which plays a key role in oxygen transport. White muscle, in contrast, is suitable only for short, ineffectual bursts of activity such as, for chickens, flying. That's why the chicken's leg meat and thigh meat are dark and its breast meat (which makes up the primary flight muscles) is white. Other birds more capable in the flight department, such as ducks and geese, have red muscle (and dark meat) throughout.

See also

• Amenable species
• Oyster (fowl)
• Poultry farming
• Pollotarianism

External links

• Information on Poultry Diseases
• PoultryCast podcast
• PoultryHub.org is a wiki-based collaborative resource centre where people share information about poultry
• The Poultry Guide - A to Z and FAQs
• World Poultry.net - all you need to know about poultry
• ChickenCrossing.Org - Information,discussion, links about chickens & other poultry
• Poultry.ie - Irish Poultry Community and Information Source