The poultry farming origin and Spanish egg production.

The hen egg has been during history one of the most important food for humans. Besides, eggs gave birth to an specific sector in the whole livestock production and in the food industry.

The origin of poultry farming is 8000 years ago, when inhabitants of some India and China regions began to tame some families of the Gallus Gallus. Coming from India valleys, Hens spread throughout Mesopotamia and Greece thanks to nomads. Later, Celtic people spread hens through Europe. Those primitive hens laid about 30 eggs per year.

Approximately in the year 42, Columela wrote in Latin De re rustica, twelve books about the situation of farming in Italics. Then, there were three species of hen in the Iberian Peninsula: meat hens, wild hens and African hens. Our current Spanish breeds, Leonesa, Andaluza, Castellana and Prats, come from these primitive species.

Many years later, Gabriel Alonso de Herrera and Fray Miguel de Agustín wrote about Breeding and Taming Hens and Other Poultry. In 1884 Nicolás de las Casas, in his Breeding Poultry Treaty, about zootechniques, economy and poultry pathology, describes exhaustively these incipient sciences. In this treaty, the author describes some delicacies and gastronomic customs and habits in which eggs were especially relevant.

Along the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century, Spanish poultry was an activity related to rural areas. Hens used to look for food on their own and sometimes they were fed with leftovers. They had also a shelter for winter months.

At the beginning of the 19^th century, poultry farming made its first steps thanks to the Poultry Farming Exposition in Madrid (1902). There were many breeds from all along the world that were famous for their high production. Soon, thanks to the sponsorship and wisdom of Mr. Salvador Castelló, Catalan poultry farming began to be very important. In those years of poultry development, the selection of native hen breeding made possible improve production.

During the first decades of the 20^th century, egg production and consumption were relatively low. However, from 1960 on, intensive poultry comes up and, at the end of this decade, egg production exceeded 600 million dozens.

Between 1970 and 1985, there was a poultry farming explosion. Spanish production reaches 900 million dozens and domestic consumption rise at the same rate. From 1991 on, there appeared large technologic innovations in production that produced an increase in installed capacity. This generated some unbalances between offer and demand that produced a collapse in prices. In the 90s, Spain was the 4^th main producer in the EU featuring 40 million layers to cover the domestic market.