The chicken (Gallus gallus) is a type of domesticated fowl, believed to be descended from the wild Indian and south-east Asian Red Junglefowl.The chicken is one of the most common and wide-spread domestic animals. With a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other bird. Humans keep chickens primarily as a source of food, from both their meat and their eggs.

The selective breeding of chickens in the last 50 years has led to the entire breed showing health issues that could make them useless as chickens.

The shelves, at least at my local and large Sainsbury's store in Bracknell are still full of broiler house birds, but there isn't a free range bird to be seen.

A covertly filmed video of factory-farmed chickens struggling to walk and enduring distressing and unnatural conditions is set to ignite a growing campaign to improve the lives of Britain's 800 million "broiler" chickens.

A shower is better for the environment than a bath and organic chickens are greener than broilers, right? Wrong: these and a host of other eco myths are shattered in a new book, Shades of Green: A (Mostly) Practical A-Z for the Reluctant Environmentalist

Researchers at the University of Alberta are organizing a birthday party for a genetic strain of a broiler chicken they preserved 50 years ago to ensure it lived on amid the evolution of its monster cousins.