Capons, Cocks and Hens: Keeping Chickens in Medieval England

If you were a chicken in medieval England, the worst thing you could be was male

We tend to picture the medieval farmyard as gently pastoral: hens scratching contentedly around the cottage, a cockerel crowing at dawn. That picture isn't wrong, exactly, it's just missing most of the story. Because from the moment a male chick hatched, the farmyard had already decided he was a problem to be solved: too many mouths, too much aggression, not enough usefulness. What happened to him next ranged from a quick death to a surgeon's knife to, for a smaller number, a fighting pit.

This is the story of the medieval chicken — hens, capons and cocks alike — but it's the males whose fate deserves the closer look.