Some think that they know answers to all questions, but here over the simplest and obvious children's question of color of a grass, the sky or salty taste of water in the sea can stay in complete prostration very long. And you do not remember why a chicken yellow?
Little chickens have to be meek and mild. Otherwise, they strongly risk to become a lunch for predators. Of course, it is impossible to call yellow color very imperceptible, especially on the farmyard in the middle of black dirt or green foliage. But the nature provided a lot of things, and coloring of a chicken is one of the ancient protective mechanisms developed in the course of evolution it is a lot of years ago.
The fact is that earlier, even long before mass domestication of hens, they led a wild life and nested in fields among a high grass. The period of a nasizhivaniye of eggs and emergence of posterity fell on the end of summer and an early autumn. And little chickabiddies began to run surely among a field grass when it dried up and became yellow. From here and camouflage coloring – the yellow chicken in a yellow autumn grass cannot almost be noticed. Of course, not all chickens yellow, some breeds of hens are born motley, gray or even black. But also it is not accidental. As wild ancestors of hens lived not only in fields, but also in the forest area and even on rocky mountain clearings, coloring of chickens varied according to habitats of birds. The nature provides everything very well and where baby birds needed a gray down to be imperceptible among stones and pieces of the earth, they were not bright yellow, but motley. Why hens, becoming adults, lose the yellowness and become red, white, black or motley? In it there is nothing surprising the fact is that yellow color gives to chickens not a constant feather, but a down which is completely covered from views after growth of feathers. Adult birds do not have need any more to be absolutely imperceptible as they are able to hide better and know about life slightly more, than kids. For this reason hens get the color characteristic of the breed with age, losing primitive yellowness and youthful naivety.