SC - egg sizes

[Par Leijonhufvud]

On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Ras said:

> > Interesting. Is there any indication that chickens remained that
> > small for the next 1,200 to 1,300 years which would then bring
> > this size chicken within the realms of documented period cookery?
> > Given the obvious advances in breeding within other types of crops
> > and farm animals during the same period, I find this highly
> > unlikely, personally. Also was there any indication of the age of
> > the chickens that the bones came from?

I can check with my source, but he didn't mention anything regarding the
age. And since he is in the final stages of a thesis, I doubt he has
time to do any more in depth reading. He also noted three finds (all
from Grötlingbo on Gotland) with egg remains (SHM 27296:7/60,
27739:9/61, and SHM 27779:4/63), but none of them mentioned sizes.
Presumably one could obtain the dig reports and hope for scale drawings,
from which one could estimate size.

I presume that if one wants to know the size of chickens, that would not
be hard to find out. AFAIK they have found a reasonable amount of bones
in e.g. the middens on Birka or Haitabu. 

> I certainly think that if the chickens grew in size then the eggs would
> also grow in size but you seem to be argueing for the opposite, chickens
> that grew in size but eggs that stayed small. While I certainly think this
> is more likely than large eggs with small chickens, it seems less likely
> than both increasing in size unless there is some other constraining factor.

I agree that there is, probably, some sort of general tendency for
larger birds to produce larger eggs. But I would hesitate to claim that
this was nessesarily so in any particular case.

/UlfR

- -- 
Par Leijonhufvud                                   parlei at algonet.se
Subtlety: the art of saying what you want to say and
getting out of range before it is understood.




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