This is a really good read. Note how much of a rarity chicken is. Today I learned the same could be said for beef too. Originally cows were for dairy as well a

This is a really good read. Note how much of a rarity chicken is. Today I learned the same could be said for beef too. Originally cows were for dairy as well as pulling the plough, they weren't there for eating until 1700 onwards when selective breeding made them 2 1/2 times bigger... Plus selective breeding of the horse for pulling the plough (by the same guy who did the selective breeding on the cow and the sheep...) meant that there was now a market for beef whereas there was not one before. Also remember that eggs were a seasonal thing - easter - and you wonder what we eat today that they ate then. Incidentally the guy that did the selective breeding could only really start doing that due to the turnip and clover. The nitrogen fixing qualities of these crops enabled crop rotation to work properly and for it to be viable to enclose the land and farm as we know it, not 'nomadically'. The guy that 'invented beef' also inspired that Darwin chap to write a little boot about it.