When did chickens start laying eggs ?

How do you stop hens laying eggs when they do so spontaneously when they reach a certain age? Pullets are young females under a year old and chickens is a collective name for the species be they old, young, female or male well thats my understanding of it from my grandad who always kept chickens.

Ah! but which came first is the real question!

Tiggypiro have you Goggled this?

I thought chickens were the general name for the animal people eat, as in Kentucky fried.

As with humans the females when reaching sexual maturity lay eggs. In humans they are not passed out of the body in shells.

I would strongly doubt you can stop them laying once they are sexually mature. ?are pullets the avian Chicken equivelent of heifers young birds just reaching maturity?
Come on chicken keepers Merlot where are you.

Chicks are the babies - of all species of birds; all of the members of this particular species are chickens.

I thought chicks were babies, pullets were what they were called once they got their first adult plumage (teenagers) chickens or hens once they had past puberty and started laying. (or maybe hens are for eating )
I'm afraid that the chickens/hens puberty timetable is not something an individual can control. Just like human females start ovulating at puberty so do birds, difference is bigger eggs.
The other difference is that domestic fowl have been bred to ovulate much more often than wild birds - who would only ovulate in their breeding seasons. There are domesticated ducks to which the same thing applies. Sparrows on the other hand do not lay eggs all winter.
Selective breeding is the reason they lay eggs young and lay them often and unless you selectively bred from hens that were poor layers, for many generations, this state of affairs will continue.
How do we know they don't enjoy egg laying?

I had some pullets eggs from a friend the other week , they look so pretty, fried and sitting on a plate.

Yikes! Forgot the apostrophe!

Love your post, tiggypiro

You could always ask Edwina Currie

Why am I reminded of (Good Life) Margot not seeing the joke about the bird that laid square eggs?

I have remembered - The Ooh-Aah Bird

As a farmers daughter it was always hens that laid eggs and chickens were the little fluffy youngsters. If chickens now lay eggs then why don't ducklings ? We never see duckling eggs for sale - only duck eggs !

When the children were small and money was tight I used to buy a boiling fowl because you roasted a chicken

There are Spring Chickens and Old Broilers, too!

I rather think that in my Scottish childhood we referred to the big ones as hens and the wee ones as chickens. My MiL used to call her grandchildren (much to their discomfiture) her 'little chickens' and she came from Yorkshire. I have now got used to using 'chickens' generically since my DS keeps some.

Weren't the little ones chooks Anno? I seem to remember bing shown the wee chookiehens in my early youth!

Ah yes Annodomini - it must be the Yorkshire in me where we call a spade a spade and a hen a hen !

Oh yes.....Yorkshire terms of endearment. My MIL called me Chicken and FIL called me Duck.

it doesn't really matter does it?

tiggypiro, I thought you meant that nobody talks about hens these days, and they are all chickens. If so, I agree with you that it doesn't make sense - I think it's perhaps lazy, or perhaps the same attitude that leads to women not being called "women", but "ladies" or "girls". We call our birds hens, but DD calls her equally adult ones chickens, and she's no sexist, so maybe it's just a generational thing.

If I was right about what you meant, what about having a twin campaign to stop "girls" being a description of adult women (unless used by themselves in an ironic way, of course)?

Wheniwasyourage - that is what I meant. It's good to know I am not alone in this !
As for your other point - my mother (just got her card from the Queen) describes herself as not being an OAP but a re-cycled teenager !!

merlot - Scottish - or at least West of Scotland - term of endearment is, inevitably, 'hen'.

Congratulations to your mother,*tiggypro*! She has obviously kept her sense of humour intact!!

Sorry, tiggypiro

I thought Chickens are what they are, hens are female chickens, cocks are male chickens, pullets are 'teenage' chicken, and chicks are baby chickens.

Mind you my only knowledge of chickens is limited to the hens my mother kept in the back garden during the war. If they didn't lay we ate them.