I understand that people also eat quail eggs, goat milk or etc etc due to geography (?) – but at what point and why did many settle on chicken eggs and cow milk?
Thank you
ETA: WOOAAAAAAH a great deal of responses here. thank you!!!!
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There are a lot of reasons.
Cows are much larger than other livestock that produce milk, which means they yield lots of milk but they can also be harvested for their meat. Their size is superseded only by the bison (which is bred in some midwest states). But we don’t breed bison as much because bison are much more aggressive and difficult to herd. Cow milk is also not homogenous, which means that the cream and fatty components in the milk rise to the top which can be separated and churned into butter. You can start to see why cows are favorable to other animals, they pretty much have the best traits that suit our diet packed into one animal. This is not to say that only cows are bred though, in other parts of the world it is common to raise goats for their milk because they are better suited to the rocky terrain and because some just prefer goat meat and milk.
As for chickens, it’s a little more tricky to see why when you consider that there are other animals that also produce clutches of edible eggs (turtles, duck, quail). Essentially, it’s because they can be raised very quickly and they have a good size to egg produce ratio. Animals like ostriches produce larger eggs but it also means they make less because more energy has to go to making them, and they are also more difficult to control. Quails lay smaller eggs and the eggshells are brittle so they aren’t really great for consumption nutrient wise (they do taste good though). Geese tend to live close to water and so they are harder to raise in inland country farms. Chickens can readily be raised in warm coops no matter the temperature outside and they can be given common inexpensive feed as opposed to more expensive food for geese and ducks.
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