Reference

Poultry Glossary

The language of the poultry yard, defined. The backbone comes from the glossary of the American Standard of Perfection (1910), the American Poultry Association's book of breed standards. We wrote the modern husbandry, hatching, and health entries ourselves. Look here when a listing mentions sickles or a vulture hock.

A

Abdomen: The soft belly area of a bird, running from the keel bone back to the pubic bones. On a hen in good lay it feels wide and pliable, and you can fit three or four fingers between the pubic bones.
Air cell: The pocket of air trapped between the two shell membranes at the blunt end of an egg. It forms as a freshly laid egg cools and shrinks, and it grows larger the longer the egg sits, which is why candlers use its size to judge age and how well an egg is holding moisture during incubation.
Albumen: The egg white. It is mostly water and protein, layered around the yolk to cushion it and to feed the growing embryo.
American breeds: The class of chicken breeds developed in the United States and Canada, such as the Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, Wyandotte, and New Hampshire. Most are dual purpose birds with yellow skin, clean legs, and red earlobes.
American Standard of Perfection: The American Poultry Association's book of breed standards, first published in 1874 and revised many times since. It spells out the shape, color, and weight a bird of each recognized breed and variety should have, and it still governs how exhibition poultry is judged.
Avian: Having to do with birds. You will see the word in disease names like avian influenza.
Avian egg: The egg of a bird. Working from the middle out, it holds a yolk, the white around it, two shell membranes, and a hard calcium shell sealed with a thin protein coat.
Aviculture: The keeping and raising of birds, whether that means a backyard flock, a breeding project, or a rare breed conservation program.
Axial feather: The short feather that sits at the bend of the wing between the primaries and the secondaries. Breeders and judges count from it when they check wing feathers.

B

Baby chick: A newly hatched chicken that has not yet had its first feed or water. Hatcheries ship at this stage because the absorbed yolk carries a chick through the first day or two of travel.
Ballooning: A swollen, fluid filled abdomen that leaves a hen waddling with her belly low and tight. It usually points to internal laying or to fluid building up in the body cavity, and it rarely ends well.
Bantam: A small chicken, roughly a quarter to a fifth the weight of a standard size bird. Some bantams are miniature versions of large breeds, and others have no large counterpart at all.
Bantam Standard: The American Bantam Association's book of standards for bantam breeds and varieties. Bantam exhibitors use it the way large fowl breeders use the Standard of Perfection.
Banty: Farm slang for a bantam, spelled banty or bantie depending on who is talking. Old timers also say biddy, which usually points at a hen rather than a small bird.
Barnyard chicken: A mixed breed chicken of no particular pedigree, often shortened to barny. These birds come out of a flock where roosters and hens of several breeds run together, and the chicks can be a surprise.
Barring: Bars or stripes extending across a feather at right angles to its length, or nearly so.
Beak: The projecting mouth parts of chickens and turkeys, consisting of upper and lower mandibles.
Bean: A hard, bean-shaped protuberance growing at tip of the upper mandible of a water fowl.
Beard: In chickens, a group of feathers pendent from the throat, as in Houdans and Polish. In turkeys, a tuft of coarse, bristly hairs, four to six inches long, projecting from upper part of breast of mature males.
Bedding: The loose material spread on a coop floor to soak up droppings and moisture. Pine shavings, chopped straw, and dry leaves all work, and the goal is to keep it dry.
Bill: The projecting mouth parts of water fowl, consisting of upper and lower mandibles.
Bill out: The habit chickens have of sweeping feed out of the feeder with their beaks and scattering it on the ground. Raising the feeder to back height and filling it only halfway cuts the waste.
Biosecurity: Everything you do to keep disease from reaching your flock. Quarantining new birds, keeping boots that walked another farm out of your run, and washing hands after handling someone else's chickens all count.
Blade: The rear part of a single comb, back of the last well-defined point, usually extending beyond the crown of the head.
Blastoderm: The small pale disc on the yolk of a fertilized egg. Once fertilization happens, the cells start dividing, and the disc widens into a ring with a clear center that some people call a bullseye.
Blastodisc: The small pale disc on the yolk of an unfertilized egg, carrying only the hen's genetic material. It looks like a solid white speck without the ring pattern you see on a fertilized blastoderm.
Bleaching: The way yellow color fades out of a hen's vent, eye ring, beak, and shanks as she lays. The pigment goes into egg yolks instead of her skin, so a washed out yellow legged hen has been laying steadily.
Blood spot: A small red fleck in an egg, left when a tiny blood vessel breaks as the yolk is released from the ovary. The egg is safe to eat, and you can lift the spot out with a knife tip if it bothers you.
Bloom: The thin, damp coating a hen lays over the shell as the egg leaves her body, which dries into a seal over the shell pores and keeps bacteria out. It is also called the cuticle, and washing an egg strips it away.
Blowout: Torn or badly stretched vent tissue, usually after a hen passes an egg too large for her. The raw tissue draws pecking from flockmates, so pull the bird and treat her somewhere quiet.
Booted: Carrying feathers down the shanks and out onto the toes. Cochins, Brahmas, and Belgian d'Uccles all show it, and muddy ground is hard on the feathering.
Botulism: Poisoning from a toxin that grows in rotting carcasses, spoiled feed, and stagnant water. Affected birds go weak and floppy in the neck, which is why old timers call it limberneck.
Brassiness: Having the color of brass; yellowish.
Break up: To bring a broody hen out of her setting mood when you have no eggs for her to hatch. A few days in a wire bottomed cage with feed and water, up off the warm bedding, usually does it.
Breast: The front of a chicken's body, the meat lying either side of the keel bone. Judges look for a full, well rounded breast, and meat buyers pay for it.
Breast blister: A swollen, fluid filled sore over the keel bone. Heavy meat birds get them from resting on damp, packed, or rough litter, and deep dry bedding prevents most cases.
Breed: A race of fowls, the members of which maintain distinctive shape characteristics that they possess in common. Breed is a broader term than variety; breed includes varieties, as, for example, the Barred, White and Buff varieties of the Plymouth Rock breed.
Breed true: When mated birds produce chicks that grow up looking like their parents. Purebred stock breeds true, and that reliability is what people pay for when they buy hatching eggs.
Breeders: The birds you hold back to produce hatching eggs. A breeder flock gets picked for health, breed type, and laying, and it is fed for fertility rather than for volume.
Broiler: A young meat chicken butchered somewhere around seven to nine weeks, dressing out at three to five pounds with tender meat and soft, flexible cartilage in the keel. The same bird is also sold as a fryer.
Broiler house: A long, climate controlled barn built for raising meat birds in one big batch. Commercial growers run thousands of broilers through a single house on a schedule.
Brood: All the young birds hatched or cared for at one time by one mother, or in one brooder.
Brooder: The heated space where chicks live until they feather out. It can be a heat plate over a stock tank in your garage or a whole barn, so long as the chicks can move toward the heat or away from it as they please.
Brooding period: The stretch from hatch until chicks no longer need added heat, usually about six weeks. You drop the brooder temperature roughly five degrees a week across that span.
Broody: A hen who has quit laying and settled on a nest to hatch eggs, sometimes called a broody hen or a setting hen. She puffs up, growls when you reach under her, and leaves the nest only briefly to eat.

C

Calcar: The technical name for the spur, the horny spike growing off the inside of the shank. Cocks grow long, sharp ones with age, and some old hens grow short ones too.
Candling: Holding a bright light against an egg in a dark room to see inside the shell. Hatchers candle around day seven and again near day fourteen to check for a developing embryo, and the light itself is called a candler.
Cankers: Cheesy yellow or white sores in the mouth, throat, or crop. Trichomoniasis causes most of them, and the wet form of fowl pox looks similar.
Cannibalism: Birds pecking each other hard enough to draw blood, then keeping at it. Crowding, glaring light, boredom, and a protein shortage all touch it off, and once blood shows the whole flock joins in.
Cape: The short feathers on the back, underneath the hackle, shaped like a cape.
Capon: A cockerel castrated young and raised for the table. He grows larger and slower than an intact male, stays out of fights, and finishes with fine grained, well marbled meat.
Carriage: The attitude, bearing or style of a bird.
Carrier: A bird that harbors a disease organism and sheds it to other birds while looking perfectly healthy. Carriers are the reason a new chicken should sit in quarantine for a month before joining your flock.
Caruncles: Small fleshy protuberances, as on the head of a turkey.
Carunculated: Having caruncles.
Cavernous: Applied to the hollow protruding nostrils of the crested breeds.
Chalazae: The two twisted white cords of dense albumen that run from opposite sides of the yolk toward the ends of the egg, holding the yolk centered. Prominent chalazae mean the egg is fresh.
Chickens: Specifically, the young of the domestic hen prior to the development of adult plumage; used as a general term to designate all domestic fowls, except turkeys, ducks, geese, pea-fowl and guinea-fowl.
Chicks: The young of the domestic hen, properly applied until the sex can be distinguished; sometimes used to designate specimens less than one year old.
Class: A group of breeds gathered by the part of the world they came from, which is how the Standard of Perfection organizes large fowl. American, Asiatic, Mediterranean, and English are the familiar ones, and this classification is what a judge works down from before comparing individual birds.
Clean legged: Having bare shanks and toes with no feathering. Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds, and Wyandottes are clean legged.
Cloaca: The chamber just inside the vent where the digestive, urinary, and reproductive tracts all empty. Manure, urates, and eggs pass out through the same opening.
Clubbed down: A chick hatched with down that never broke free of its sheath, so the fluff stands in stiff little spikes. Riboflavin shortage in the breeder hen's ration is the usual cause.
Cluck: The low, repeated sound a hen makes to call her chicks or to warn them. A broody hen clucking on the nest picks up the old nickname clucker.
Clutch: The batch of eggs a hen gathers in a nest and sets on. The word also covers the group of chicks that come off that setting.
Coccidiosis: An intestinal disease caused by coccidia, single celled parasites that thrive in warm damp litter. Young birds hunch, go off feed, and pass bloody droppings, and the fix is dry bedding plus an approved treatment in the water.
Coccidiostat: A drug mixed into chick feed or water that holds coccidia numbers down while the birds build immunity. Medicated starter feed almost always carries one, usually amprolium.
Cock: A male fowl one year old and over.
Cockerel: A male fowl less than one year old.
Comb: The fleshy protuberance growing on the top of a fowl's head. The standard varieties of combs are: single, rose, pea, v-shaped and strawberry, all others being modifications of these.
Condition: The state of a fowl as regards health, cleanliness and order of plumage.
Conformation: The shape and structure of a bird's body, measured against what the breed calls for. Judges read conformation by handling the bird as much as by looking at it.
Coop: The house your chickens sleep and lay in. A good one keeps rain and predators out while still moving enough air to carry ammonia away.
Coverts: See tail-coverts, flight-coverts and wing-coverts.
Creaminess: Having the color of cream; light yellow.
Crest: A crown or tuft of feathers on the head of a fowl.
Crop: The receptacle in which a fowl's food is accumulated before it passes into the gizzard.
Crossbred: A bird whose parents were two different breeds. Sellers also use crossbreed for the same thing, and the first generation off such a mating often grows faster and lays better than either parent line.
Crumbles: Pellets broken into coarse bits, sized for birds too small to handle a whole pellet. Growing pullets and young meat birds usually eat crumbles.
Cull: To take a bird out of the flock because it is sick, unproductive, or badly off type, and also the name for the bird you removed. Culling might mean the stockpot, or it might mean selling the bird to someone with different goals.
Cushion: The mass of feathers at rear of back of a fowl, partly covering the tail; well-developed in Cochin females.
Cuticle: The thin protein film covering the shell, laid down last as the egg is laid, sealing the pores against bacteria while still letting air through. It is also called the bloom, and washing an egg in warm soapy water removes it.

D

Daw: The pinkish-yellow color found in eyes of the Oriental and some other varieties of Games.
Debeak: To trim off the sharp tip of a beak so birds cannot injure each other by pecking. Commercial layer operations do it to day old chicks, and small flock keepers seldom need to.
Defect: A fault in a show bird that costs it points under the Standard, such as a crooked toe or off color feathers. It counts against the bird without throwing it out of the class the way a disqualification would.
Dewlap: A pendulous skin developed under the throat.
Disinfectant: A product that kills germs on cleaned surfaces. Scrape and wash first, because organic matter shields the bugs and most disinfectants quit working in the presence of manure.
Disqualification: A deformity or serious defect that renders a fowl unworthy to win a prize.
Disqualified: Applied to a fowl that is unworthy to win a prize.
Double yolker: An egg holding two yolks, laid when a hen releases two at once. Young pullets just coming into lay produce most of them, and they rarely hatch.
Down: The first hairy covering of chicks; also the tiny tufts of hair-like growth that sometimes are found on the shanks, toes or feet of fowls. (Note: If quill and web are discernible to the eye, it is a feather.)
Drake: A male of the duck family.
Droppings: Chicken manure. Normal droppings are firm and brown with a white urate cap, and the loose brown cecal droppings a bird passes a few times a day look alarming without being a problem.
Dub: To cut off a bird's comb and wattles close to the head. Game fowl keepers dub their cocks, and some breeders in hard winter country dub large combed males to head off frostbite.
Dubbing: Cutting off the comb, wattles and ear-lobes, so as to leave the head smooth.
Duck: A female of the duck family, as distinguished from the drake, or male.
Duck-Footed: The hind toe carried forward.
Duckling: The young of the duck family, in the downy stage of plumage prior to the development of feathers.
Dust bath: The wallow a chicken digs in dry dirt, then works into her feathers to smother mites and lice. Give the flock a dry spot under cover so they can keep at it through a wet winter.

E

Ear-Lobes: The folds of bare skin just below the ears, sometimes called "deaf-ears." Ear-lobes vary in color in different breeds, being red, white, purple, cream, etc.; they also vary greatly in size.
Earlobes: The bare patches of skin sitting just below a chicken's ear openings. In many breeds their color tracks shell color, so white lobes tend to go with white eggs and red lobes with brown.
Egg sizes: The USDA weight grades for a dozen eggs: peewee at 15 ounces, small at 18, medium at 21, large at 24, extra large at 27, and jumbo at 30. Grading goes by the weight of the whole dozen, so a carton can hold eggs that look a little uneven.
Egg tooth: The hard little point on the top of a chick's beak, also called the chick tooth, used to chip through the shell at hatch. It dries up and drops off within a few days.
Electrolytes: Mineral salts added to drinking water to help birds recover from heat, shipping, or illness. Hatcheries recommend them for the first days after chicks arrive.
Embryo: The developing chick inside the egg, from the first cell divisions until hatch. Twenty one days of incubation takes it from a speck on the yolk to a bird ready to break out.
Exhibition breeds: Breeds kept mainly for the show ring, bred toward the feather, shape, and color the Standard describes. Many lay well enough for a backyard, though nobody selected them for the egg basket.

F

Face: The bare skin on the head of a fowl around and below the eyes.
Faking: Removing, or attempting to remove, foreign color in face or ear-lobes when it is a disqualification; removing one or more side sprigs, or trimming a comb in any manner, except the dubbing of Games; artificial coloring of any feather; splicing feathers; injury to plumage of any fowl entered by another exhibitor; plugging up holes on legs of smooth-legged varieties where feathers or stubs disqualify; staining of legs; in fact, any self-evident attempt on the part of an exhibitor to deceive the judge and thus obtain an unfair advantage in competition.
Fart egg: A tiny egg with no yolk, usually laid by a pullet whose plumbing is still sorting itself out. People also call them fairy eggs, wind eggs, and witch eggs.
Feather: A growth formed of a discernible quill and a vane (called web) upon each side of it. (Note: If the quill is not discernible to the eye, it is down.)
Feather legged: Growing feathers down the shanks and sometimes onto the toes. Brahmas, Cochins, Silkies, and Faverolles all carry it, and their runs need to stay reasonably dry.
Feral: Chickens living wild, feeding and breeding with no help from anybody. Kauai has flocks of them, and stray birds around old homesteads can go feral within a generation.
Fertile: An egg carrying a developing embryo, which takes a rooster running with the hens. Fertility is the share of eggs in a setting that turn out fertilized, and it runs high for a week or two after a hen mates.
Finish: How well fleshed and fat covered a meat bird is at butchering. A bird with good finish has a smooth, filled out breast and pale fat under the skin.
Flight feathers: The long stiff primaries on the outer half of the wing, the ones that lift a bird over a fence. Clipping them on one wing throws a chicken off balance enough to keep her home.
Flight-Coverts: The short, moderately-stiff feathers located at the base of the wing primaries, or flight feathers, and partly covering their quills.
Flights: The primary feathers of the wing, used in flying, but folded up out of sight, or nearly so, when the fowl is at rest.
Flock: A group of chickens kept together. Birds sort themselves into a pecking order within a flock, and adding new ones stirs the whole thing up again.
Fluff: The soft feathers about thighs and posterior part of a fowl; also the soft, downy under-part of a feather.
Forage: To range around hunting up greens, seeds, worms, and bugs. Good foragers cut your feed bill and put more color in the yolks.
Forced molt: Pushing a whole laying flock into molt at once by cutting feed and light, then bringing them back for a second laying cycle. Commercial operations use it, and the practice draws steady criticism on welfare grounds.
Forced-air incubator: An incubator with a fan moving air through the cabinet so the temperature stays even everywhere inside. Run it at 99.5 degrees, a degree lower than a still air machine reads at the top of the eggs.
Fowl pox: A slow spreading viral disease, also called avian pox, carried mostly by mosquitoes. The dry form raises wart like scabs on the comb, wattles, and face, while the wet form puts yellow lesions in the mouth and throat and can choke a bird.
Free range: Birds with real access to the outdoors instead of living their lives inside. On a USDA labeled meat bird the term means only that the flock had outdoor access, so ask a seller what the ground actually looks like.
Frizzle: A gene that curls feathers outward and forward so a bird looks like it walked through a dryer. Breed a frizzle to a smooth feathered bird, since two frizzle genes together give you brittle feathers and a bird that struggles to stay warm.
Frizzled: Having feathers that curl or turn backward and upward, toward the head of the bird, as in the Frizzles.
Frosting: A marginal edging or tracing of color on feathers of laced, spangled and penciled varieties.
Furnished: Applicable to a cockerel with fully-developed comb, hackle, saddle, tail, etc.

G

Gallus domesticus: The scientific name for the domestic chicken, often written in full as Gallus gallus domesticus. Every breed from Silkie to Jersey Giant belongs to it.
Gallus gallus: The red junglefowl of southeast Asia, the wild bird every domestic chicken descends from. You can still see the resemblance in a Black Breasted Red game bird.
Germinal disc: The pale spot on the surface of the yolk holding the hen's genetic material and the spot where sperm enters. It is the blastodisc before fertilization and the blastoderm after.
Giblets: The heart, liver, and gizzard saved from a dressed bird, often bagged with the neck. Simmer them for stock or gravy.
Gills: A term that is applied to the wattles. (See "Wattles.")
Gipsy Color: Dark purple, approaching black.
Gizzard: The thick muscled organ that grinds feed with the help of swallowed grit, doing the work teeth would do. It sits past the proventriculus and comes out tough enough to need long, slow cooking.
Grit: Small hard stones a bird swallows and holds in the gizzard to mill her feed. Birds on pasture or scratch grain need it, and oyster shell is a soft calcium supplement that dissolves rather than grinding.
Gullet: The esophagus, the tube carrying feed from the mouth down to the crop. A bird that gulps dry mash without water can pack it and choke.

H

Hackle: The neck plumage of either sex, formed of the hackle feathers.
Hackle Feathers: The long, narrow feathers growing on the neck of a fowl, either sex.
Hangers: A term sometimes applied to the lesser sickles and tail-coverts.
Hatch: The moment a chick breaks out of its shell, and also the whole group of chicks that come off one setting. Sellers list a hatch date so buyers know how old the birds are.
Hatchability: The share of fertile eggs in a setting that produce live chicks. Breeder age and egg handling move that number more than most people expect.
Hatching egg: A fertile egg meant for the incubator or a broody hen. These sell above eating eggs and should be collected several times a day and held cool until you set them.
Hen: A female chicken past her first year. Younger females go by pullet until they hit about twelve months old.
Hen-Feathered: A male bird that resembles a hen, owing to the absence of sickles, pointed hackle feathers, etc., is said to be "hen-feathered."
Hock: See "Knee-Joint."
Horn: A beak or shank color running dark brownish gray, like the horn on a cow. Several breeds call for horn beaks in their standard.
Hover: A canopy set over a brooder heat source that traps warmth down at chick level. Old coal and oil brooders used big sheet metal hovers, and the same idea shows up now in heating plate brooders.
Hybrid: A bird from a cross between two breeds or two strains, bred for a job like heavy laying or fast growth. Hybrids often outproduce their parents and their chicks will not come out the same.

I

Inbred: Bred from closely related parents. Careful line breeding fixes the traits you want, and too much of it brings small size and weak chicks.
Incubation period: The stretch from setting an egg to hatch, which runs 21 days for chickens. To incubate is to hold eggs at that heat and humidity the whole way. Duck eggs need about 28 days and quail closer to 17.
Incubator: A heated cabinet that holds eggs at hatching temperature and humidity, doing the work a broody hen does. Better models turn the eggs for you, and on cheap ones you turn by hand three times a day.
Infertile: An egg with no live embryo in it, so no amount of incubating will hatch it. Infertility in a flock usually traces back to a rooster who is too old or too heavy to breed his hens.
Infundibulum: The funnel at the top of the oviduct that catches the yolk when the ovary releases it. Fertilization happens right here, in the fifteen minutes or so before the white starts going on.
Intensity of lay: How many days a hen lays in a row before she takes a day off. A pullet laying five straight and resting one has higher intensity than a hen laying every other day.

J

Jaw: The base of the upper and lower mandibles.
Jumbo: The largest USDA egg size, 30 ounces or more per dozen. Older hens lay them, and so do pullets that hand you a double yolker.

K

Keel: The blade of the breast-bone of a fowl; also the pendent fold of flesh and skin hanging from the under-part of the body, as in some breeds of ducks and geese.
Knee-Joint: The joint between the thigh and shank.
Knock-Kneed: A deformity in which the legs come too near together at the knee-joints and are bent outward, laterally, below the knees.

L

Laced, Lacing: A feather edged or bordered with a band of color differing from the body color of feather.
Layer ration: Feed built for hens in production, around 16 percent protein with extra calcium for shells. Wait to switch until the first eggs show up, since that calcium load is hard on birds that are not laying yet.
Leader: The well-developed spike in which a rose comb terminates at the rear; also called the spike.
Leaf Comb: A combination of two small single combs, having serrated, leaf-like edges; the original Houdan comb, now replaced in America by the v-shaped comb.
Leg: Includes thigh and shank.
Leg Feathers: Feathers growing on the outer side of the shank, as in Asiatics.
Lesser Sickles: See "Sickles."
Litter: The bedding on a coop floor, usually pine shavings or chopped straw. Deep litter means you keep adding fresh material on top and let the pack compost in place through winter.
Lopped Comb: A comb falling over to one side. To disqualify, in a single comb, some portion must fall below the horizontal plane where the comb begins to lop; in the rose or pea comb varieties it must lop over far enough to come in contact with one side of the fowl's head.

M

Mandible: Either half of the beak, upper or lower. Scissor beak is a defect where the two mandibles stop lining up and the bird has a hard time picking up feed.
Mash: Feed ground to a loose meal. Birds eat it slower than pellets, which helps with feather picking, and they waste more of it billing it out of the trough.
Mate: To breed, and also the bird a rooster runs with. A breeding pen might be one cock mated to eight or ten hens.
Mealy: Having the appearance of being sprinkled with meal; applied to buff varieties where the ground color is stippled with a lighter color.
Meat breeds: Breeds kept for the table, carrying wide breasts and putting on weight fast. Cornish Cross and the slower growing ranger types cover most of what backyard growers raise.
Meat spot: A small brown or reddish fleck floating in the white or riding on the yolk. It is a bit of tissue picked up somewhere in the oviduct, harmless to eat, though graders pull those eggs out.
Mite: A tiny external parasite that feeds on blood and skin. Northern fowl mites live on the bird full time; red roost mites hide in coop cracks by day and come out at night to feed.
Molt: The yearly shed and regrowth of feathers, usually in fall, when a hen stops laying for a month or two while she rebuilds her coat. Forced molting is the commercial trick of cutting feed or daylight to push a whole flock into molt at once so they come back into lay together.
Mossy: Irregular, dark penciling appearing in centers of laced feathers and destroying the desirable contrast of color.
Mottled: Plumage marked on the surface with spots of different colors or shades of color.
Muffs: The cluster of feathers covering the sides of the face below the eyes, extending from the beard to the ear-lobes; found only on bearded varieties.

N

Nest: The spot a hen picks to lay. A nest box gives her somewhere dark and private, which keeps the eggs clean and keeps you from hunting the hedgerow.
Nest egg: A wooden or ceramic dummy egg left in a box to teach hens where to lay. It also tells you when something is stealing from the nest.
Nest run: Eggs sold just as they came from the nest, ungraded and unsorted for size. Plenty of small farm eggs move this way.
NPIP: The National Poultry Improvement Plan, a USDA and state certification program that tests flocks for pullorum-typhoid and other diseases. An NPIP number on a listing means the seller's birds have been tested, and most states require it before birds or hatching eggs cross a state line.

O

Obtuse Angle: An angle greater than a right-angle, i.e., one containing more than 90 degrees.
Oil sack: The common name for the uropygial gland, the little oil gland sitting at the base of the tail. A bird presses wax out of it with her beak while preening.
Ovary: The organ that grows and releases yolks. Only the left one develops in a hen, and it already holds every yolk she will ever lay on the day she hatches.
Oviduct: The long tube a yolk travels down, picking up white, membranes, shell, and bloom on the way. The whole trip takes about 25 hours.

P

Parasite: Anything living on or in a bird at the bird's expense. Lice and mites work the outside while worms and coccidia work the gut.
Parental immunity: Protection a chick carries from antibodies its mother packed into the yolk. It fades over the first couple of weeks, which is why vaccine timing matters so much.
Parti-Colored: Feathers or fowls having two or more colors.
Pasting: Droppings caked over a chick's vent until it seals shut, also called pasted vent or pasty butt. Shipped chicks get it worst, and you clear it with a warm damp cloth and a little patience.
Pea Comb: A triple comb, of medium length, resembling three straight, single combs placed parallel with one another, and joined at base and rear, each having short but distinctly-divided serrations, the serrations of the two outer rows being lower and smaller than those of the middle row, and those of each row being larger and somewhat thicker midway of the comb than at front and rear.
Pecking order: The social ranking in a flock, worked out by pecking until everybody knows their place. Add new birds and the whole thing gets torn up and settled again.
Pellets: Feed pressed into short cylinders. Birds clean them up fast and very little gets wasted on the floor.
Pen: A male and four females.
Penciling: Small markings or stripes on a feather. They may run straight across, as in the penciled Hamburgs, in which case they frequently are called bars, or may follow the outline of the feather, taking a crescentic form, as in Dark Brahmas, Partridge Cochins, etc.
Pendulous crop: A crop that has stretched out and lost its tone, so it hangs low and never empties right. The bird slowly starves while looking full.
Peppered, Peppering: Sprinkled with gray or black.
Perch: A bar for birds to sit on, usually two by two lumber with the sharp edges knocked off. Chickens want height and will fight over the top rail.
Perosis: A leg deformity in growing birds where the hock gives way and the tendon slips off to the side, caused by short manganese or choline in the feed. Also called slipped tendon.
Persistency of lay: How long a hen keeps laying before she quits for the season. A persistent hen is still filling the nest box in November while her pen mates have gone into molt.
Pickout: A vent injury caused by other birds pecking at it, often deep enough to kill. Blood pulls in more pecking, so pull the hurt bird the moment you see it.
Pigmentation: The yellow color carried in a bird's beak, shanks, and skin. Laying bleaches it out in a known order, vent first and shanks last, so a washed-out hen has been working.
Pinfeathers: New feathers still wrapped in their waxy sheath, coming in after a molt or on a young bird. They bleed if you break one and they are a nuisance to pull when you dress a carcass.
Pip: The first hole a chick punches through the shell with its egg tooth. Hatch usually follows within a day, so keep the lid down and let it work.
Plumage: The feathers of a fowl.
Popeye: Swollen watery eyes in young birds, most often from ammonia building up in damp litter. Fresh bedding and better airflow clear it up before it turns into a real eye infection.
Poult: The young of the domestic turkey, properly applied until the sex can be distinguished, when they become cockerels and pullets.
Poultry: Domestic fowls reared for exhibition, for the table, or for their eggs or feathers.
Pox: Fowl pox, a virus that raises scabby wart-like bumps on the comb, wattles, and face. Mosquitoes carry it, and the wet form goes into the throat where it can choke a bird.
Predator: Anything that eats your chickens. Raccoons and hawks get most of the blame, though a loose dog will kill more birds in one afternoon than anything else around.
Primaries: The flight feathers of the wing, hidden, or nearly so, when the wing is closed.
Primary flight feathers: The ten long feathers on the outer half of each wing, past the joint. Those are the ones you clip when you want a bird to stay on your side of the fence.
Production breed: A breed or strain selected hard for egg numbers, like the White Leghorn or the commercial red hybrids. They eat less feed per egg and they wear out sooner than heritage stock.
Profile: A direct side view of a fowl, applied both to live specimens and to illustrations.
Progeny test: Judging a breeding bird by how its offspring turn out. It costs you a year of waiting and it is the only honest way to know whether a cock is worth keeping.
Proventriculus: The true stomach, a glandular pouch sitting between the crop and the gizzard where acid and enzymes go to work. Everything a bird swallows passes through here before the grinding starts.
Pubic bones: The two pointed bones on either side of the vent, also called pinbones or lay bones. Spread far enough apart for two or three fingers means a hen is in production.
Pullet: A female fowl less than one year old.
Purebred: A bird whose parents were both the same breed, so the chicks come out looking like the parents. It says nothing on its own about show quality.

Q

Quill: The hollow, horny, basal part or stem of a feather. (See "Shaft.")

R

Range fed: Birds turned out on pasture, picking up grass and bugs alongside their feed. Yolks come out darker and the label carries weight at a farm stand.
Ration: The feed a bird gets in a day, and the recipe behind it. Most backyard flocks run through starter, then grower, then layer.
Replacements: Young pullets raised to take over from hens going out of production. Start a fresh batch every year or two and the eggs never stop coming.
Roaster: A meat bird grown past broiler size, dressing out around five to eight pounds at three to five months. Bigger frame, more fat, better flavor.
Roost: Where birds sleep at night, and the act of settling in there. Chickens go to roost on their own at dusk and will not move once it goes dark.
Rooster: A term commonly applied to a cockerel or cock, but not used by fanciers.
Rose Comb: A low, thick, solid comb, the upper surface of which should be covered with small, rounded points. This comb terminates in a well-developed spike, which may turn upward, as in Hamburgs, be nearly level, as in the Rose-Comb Leghorns, or turn downward, as in the Wyandottes.
Roup: An old farm word for a bad respiratory infection with a swollen face, foul-smelling discharge, and rattling breath. Today it would get named infectious coryza or one of the mycoplasmas.

S

Saddle: The rear part of the back of a male bird, extending to the tail and covered by the saddle feathers.
Saddle Feathers: The feathers growing out of the saddle.
Saddle Hackles: The long, narrow, pointed feathers growing from a male bird's saddle and drooping at the sides.
Salmonella: A group of bacteria that can live quietly in a bird's gut and still make people sick. Pullorum and fowl typhoid are the strains NPIP testing goes after.
Scales: The hard overlapping plates covering shanks and toes. Scaly leg mites burrow underneath and lift them, leaving a crusty rough-looking leg.
Scaly Legs: A fowl's legs having an incrustation or deposit upon and beneath the scales.
Scratch: Cracked corn and mixed grain thrown on the ground as a treat. Treat it like candy and keep it under about ten percent of the diet or laying falls off.
Scratcher: Old market talk for a hen kept loose in the yard to forage for part of her own living. The word comes from the sideways raking chickens do with their feet to turn up seed and bugs.
Secondaries: The long quill feathers that grow on the second joint or fore-arm of a fowl's wing, visible when the wing is folded. With the primaries, they constitute the main feathers of the wing.
Serrated: Notched along the edge like a saw.
Serration: One of the projections of a serrate formation, as a serrated comb.
Setting: Putting a clutch under a broody hen or into an incubator, and the batch of eggs itself. A hen who has gone broody is said to be set, and she will hold that nest the full 21 days.
Sex feathers: The pointed glossy saddle and hackle feathers a cockerel grows, plus the curved sickles in his tail. They show up around three months and settle any argument about who is who.
Sex link: A cross where chicks hatch out different colors by sex, so you can pick pullets from cockerels on day one. Red sex links and black sex links are the ones you see most.
Sexed chicks: Chicks sorted by sex at the hatchery before shipping. Vent sexing runs about 90 percent accurate, so a surprise cockerel turns up in most orders.
Shaft: The stem of a feather, especially the part filled with pith which bears the barbs.
Shafting: The shaft of the plume portion of the feather being lighter or darker in color than the web of the feather.
Shank: The lower, scaly part of a fowl's leg, exclusive of the foot and toes.
Shell: The hard calcium carbonate outside of an egg, laid down in the last twenty hours before the hen lays it. Something like 17,000 tiny pores let air pass through to the embryo.
Shell membranes: Two thin skins lying between the shell and the white. They pull away together on a fresh boiled egg and separate at the blunt end to form the air cell.
Sickles: The long, curved feathers of a male bird's tail, properly applied to the top pair only, but sometimes used in referring to the prominent tail-coverts, which also are called lesser sickles.
Side Sprigs: Extraneous, well-defined growths on the side of a comb.
Single Comb: A comb consisting of a single, thin, fleshy, serrated formation, rising from the beak and extending backward over the crown of the head, and, in males, beyond the head.
Slip: A caponizing term for a bird that got only partly castrated, so a scrap of testicular tissue is left behind and regrows. Slips crow and act like cockerels, and they grade below true capons.
Slipped Wing: A wing of a fowl not closely folded and held up in proper position; a defect resulting from injury, or from weakness of muscles of wing.
Smut: Off-colored feathering where the standard calls for clean color, like dark ticking scattered through a white bird. Judges cut hard for it.
Solid Color, Self-Color: A uniform color, unmixed with any other.
Spangle: A clearly-defined marking of distinctive color, located at the end of a spangled feather.
Spangled: Plumage made up of spangled feathers.
Spent: A hen past useful production, usually after two or three laying years. Spent hens go to the stock pot or sell cheap by the crate.
Splashed Feather: A feather with colors scattered and irregularly intermixed.
Split or Fish-Tail Comb: A single comb in which the blade is divided and the two parts overlap; another form is a tendency toward a double blade, in which the comb is divided perpendicularly.
Sport: A bird that turns up with a new trait nobody bred for. Breeders have built whole varieties off one good sport.
Spraddle leg: A chick whose legs slide out sideways so it cannot stand, caused by slick brooder footing or a rough hatch. Also called splayed legs, and a small hobble between the hocks straightens it out in a few days if you catch it early.
Spur: A horn-like protuberance, growing from the inner side of the shank of a fowl; may be knob-like or pointed, according to the age of the fowl and the sex.
Squirrel Tail: A fowl's tail, any portion of which projects forward toward the neck, beyond a perpendicular line drawn from the juncture of tail and back.
Stag: A term used for a young male, chiefly employed by game fanciers.
Standard: The written description of what a breed is supposed to look like, published by the American Poultry Association in the Standard of Perfection. Show birds get scored against it point by point.
Standard sized: A full-size bird rather than a bantam. Most breeds come in both versions, with the bantam running about a quarter of the weight.
Started pullets: Young hens sold anywhere from several weeks to a few months old, past the fragile brooder stage. They cost more than chicks and they lay sooner.
Starter: The high protein feed chicks live on from hatch to about six weeks, usually 18 to 20 percent. Meat birds want it higher.
Starve-out: A chick that never works out where the feed and water are and dies with an empty crop. Scattering crumbles on paper towel for the first few days heads it off.
Station: Ideal pose, embodying standard style and symmetry, notably height and reach, as applied to Games.
Sternum: The breastbone, the keel ridge running down the middle of the breast. Run a finger along it and a sharp keel tells you the bird has lost condition.
Stewing chicken: An older hen sold for long slow cooking. The meat is tough and the broth beats anything a young bird will give you.
Still-air incubator: An incubator with no fan, so heat rises and layers inside the case. Read your temperature at the top of the eggs, around 101.5 degrees, and stick to a single level of eggs.
Stipple: Verb: To execute in stipple, i.e., draw, paint or engrave by means of dots instead of lines. Noun: The effect obtained in color work by the use of dots instead of lines or strokes.
Straight-run chicks: Chicks sold unsexed, however they came out of the hatcher. Plan on roughly half cockerels and price your order accordingly.
Strain: A family of any variety of fowls bred in line by descent by one fancier, or a successor, during a number of years, that has acquired individual characteristics which distinguish it more or less from other strains or specimens of the same variety.
Strain cross: A mating between two separate strains inside one breed. Breeders use it to pick up some hybrid vigor without going outside the breed.
Strawberry Comb: A comb approaching in shape the outline and surface of a strawberry.
Stub: A short, partly-grown feather; applied especially to such feathers appearing on the shanks or toes of clean-legged fowls.
Surface Color: The visible color of the plumage when a fowl is at rest. (See "Under-Color.")
Symmetry: Perfection of proportion; the harmony of all the parts or sections of a fowl, viewed as a whole, with regard to the standard type of the breed it represents.

T

Tail Feathers, Main: The straight and stiff feathers of the tail that are contained inside the sickles and tail-coverts; the top pair are sometimes slightly curved, but generally are straight.
Tail-Coverts: The curved feathers in front of and at the sides of the tail, usually of same color as the tail, but sometimes laced or penciled.
Tenderloin: The small inner strip of breast muscle lying against the keel, one on each side. It pulls off easily and cooks more tender than the main breast.
Thighs: That part of the legs above the shanks.
Thumb Mark: A disfiguring depression which sometimes appears in the side of a single comb.
Tin hen: Old slang for an incubator, from the days when the machines were sheet metal boxes with a kerosene lamp underneath.
Toe-Feathering: The feathers growing on the toes, as in the feather-legged breeds.
Topknot: A word wrongly used as meaning crest; no longer employed by fanciers.
Trio: One male and two females.
Twisted Comb: An irregularly-shaped comb, falling or curving from side to side, being distorted from the normal, perpendicular position.
Twisted Feather: A feather with quill or shaft twisted.
Type: The overall shape and build of a bird, the outline that tells you the breed from across the yard. Judges weigh type ahead of color.
Typical: Expressing a characteristic, in color or form, representative of a breed or variety; for example, typical shape, meaning the form peculiar to a breed.

U

Under-Color: The color of the downy portion of the plumage, not visible when the plumage of a fowl is in its natural position.
Undercolor: The color of the fluff down next to the skin, hidden under the surface feathers. Judges part the feathers to check it, and wrong undercolor sinks a bird that looks fine on top.
Unthrifty: A bird that stays small and dull no matter how well you feed it. Worms or coccidia are usually behind it.
Uropygial gland: The oil gland at the base of the tail, also called the preen gland or oil sack. Birds squeeze it with their beaks and work the wax through their feathers to stay waterproof.
Utility breeds: Dual purpose breeds that lay a fair number of eggs and still dress out a respectable carcass. Plymouth Rocks and Sussex are the old standbys.

V

V-Shaped Comb: A comb formed of two well-defined, horn-like sections.
Variety: A subdivision of a breed, used to distinguish fowls having the standard shape of the breed to which they belong, but differing in color of plumage, shape of comb, etc., from other groups of the same breed. The general difference between the terms "breed" and "variety" is well brought out in the statement, popular among fanciers, "Shape makes the breed; color the variety."
Vent: The single opening a bird uses to pass droppings and lay eggs. On a hen in lay it looks moist and open.
Vent prolapse: When part of the oviduct pushes out through the vent and stays out, also called prolapsed vent or blowout. Overweight hens and pullets that started laying too young get it, and the rest of the flock will peck at it within minutes.
Ventriculus: The gizzard, a thick muscular stomach that grinds feed against swallowed grit. It sits downstream of the proventriculus and does the job teeth would do.
Vitelline membrane: The thin skin holding a yolk together. It weakens as an egg ages, which is why an old yolk breaks the second it hits the pan.
Vulture-Hock: The stiff quill feathers growing on the thighs, extending backward, straight beyond the knee-joint or "hock"; to disqualify, they must be without a sufficient quantity of fluffy feathers to relieve the stiff appearance and fill up the sharp angles, viewed in profile.

W

Wattles: The pendent growths at the sides and base of the beak.
Web: Web of feather: the flat or plumed portion of a feather, made up of a series of barbs on either side of the shaft. Web of feet: the flat skin between the toes. Web of wings: the triangular skin attaching the wing to the body, visible when the wing is extended.
Whiskers: The feather tufts on the face of muffed and bearded breeds like Ameraucanas and Faverolles. The standard for each breed spells out how full they should be.
Wind egg: A tiny yolkless egg, sometimes no bigger than a grape, known around the barn as a fart egg, rooster egg, or fairy egg. A pullet just coming into lay throws them and nothing is wrong with her.
Windpuffs: Pockets of air trapped under the skin after an air sac tears, usually from a scuffle or a rough landing. The bird looks inflated in spots and a sterile needle lets it out.
Wing-Bar: The stripe or bar of color extending across the middle of the wing, formed by the color or marking of the wing-coverts.
Wing-Bay: The triangular section of the wing below the wing-bar, formed by the exposed portion of the secondaries when the wing is folded.
Wing-Bow: The upper or shoulder part of the wing.
Wing-Coverts: The small, close feathers clothing the bend of the wing and covering the roots of the secondary quills.
Wing-Fronts: The front edge of the wing at the shoulder. This section of the wing is sometimes called wing-butts; the term wing-fronts is recommended, thus avoiding confusion.
Wing-Points: The ends of the primaries; erroneously called "wing-butts."
Wry Tail: Tail of a fowl turned to one side, permanently so.

Y

Yolk: The yellow center of an egg and the food supply for a developing embryo. Diet drives the color, so pastured hens lay deep orange yolks.
Yolk sac: What remains of the yolk after a chick hatches, drawn up into its belly on the last day inside the shell. It feeds the chick for two or three days, which is how hatcheries ship day-olds through the mail.

Historical entries: The American Standard of Perfection, Illustrated, American Poultry Association, 1910, public domain. Modern entries written for this site. The class, breed, variety, and strain framework follows Dr. John Skinner's outline in the 1988 APA Yearbook.