Chicken Big
Chickens raised for meat have quadrupled in weight since the 1950's - thanks to selective breeding.
A new study has shown that meat chickens are four times larger today than they were in the late 1950's. By studying three lines of chicken - from 1957, 1978, and 2005 - Dr. Martin Zuidhof, an Associate Professor of Poultry Systems at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, has determined that continual selective breeding is responsible for a compounded growth rate of 3.3 percent. In the experiment in which all chickens were given the same feed over the same number of days, the average weight for the 1957 line was just over 900 grams, while the average for 2005 was over 4,200 grams. The study also found that meatier chickens are being produced today with much less feed, which makes the process of raising and marketing chicken more cost efficient.
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