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.

A cat looks after several chicks after the hen was killed at a farm in Amman, Jordan, May 13, 2007.

Birds raised for canned hunts at gun clubs and in state "recreational" areas are grown in packed pens -- think factory farmed chickens -- and fitted with goggles so they won't peck each other to death from the crowding. When released for put and take hunters like Cheney, pen raised birds can barely walk or fly.

By 2007, the program will ask farms or households that house chickens, ducks, turkeys, cows, pigs, goats or horses to register with a database and obtain a 15-digit identification number and GPS coordinate. Beginning in 2008, animals under the proposal would carry a radio frequency identity, or RFID, tag.One part of the plan is not voluntary:

Why is it legal for corporate factory farms to sell meat from livestock that have been fed arsenic as an appetite stimulant, the remains of other animals, urea from natural gas, chicken feathers, hormones and daily doses of antibiotics to keep the animals from dying from their sick surroundings?

[Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza, Subtype A/H7, Italy, New outbreak reported: Region, Piemonte - Province, Torino - Municipality, Rondissone; Date reported: 29/10/2007; Type Unit: Poultry Farm (chickens, ducks, others); Animals affected: 582; AI Type: H7 (LPAI). Source: Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie (IZSVE), Padova.]