Contact the County Department Directory Documents and Forms Documents and Reports Forms and Applications Bids & RFPs About the County County Service Fees; A to Z County Services Social Media Facebook In the News Weekly Bulletin County News County Parks Community Resources
One Cornish hen per person is considered an appropriate serving, though larger hens can be split in half to feed two people. Most sources credit the Makowsky's of Connecticut for developing the small bird in the mid-1950s, while other historians crediting Donald John Tyson of Tyson Foods with the initial idea for breeding and marketing the hens in the 1960's.
Modern varieties of chicken such as the Cornish Cross, are bred specifically for meat production, with an emphasis placed on the ratio of feed to meat produced by the animal. The most common breeds of chicken consumed in the US are Cornish and White Rock. Chickens raised specifically for food are called broilers. In the United States, broilers are typically butchered at a young age. Modern Cornish Cross hybrids, for example, are butchered as early as 8 weeks for fryers and 12 weeks for roasting birds.