Leghorn Chicken

An Italian chicken breed that originated in Tuscany, taking its English name from Leghorn, the old English name for the port city of Livorno; birds were exported to North America around 1828 from that port, first called Italians, then renamed Leghorn by 1865, and the breed reached Britain from the United States in 1870. Leghorns are marked by bright yellow legs, white earlobes and typically a single comb, though rose combs are permitted in some countries, and they come in several color varieties, with the white Leghorn the one most commonly kept as a commercial layer around the world. The breed is valued above all for egg production, laying an average of 280 eggs a year and sometimes 300 to 320, each weighing at least 55 grams, and white Leghorns have been used extensively to breed the highly productive egg laying hybrids used in commercial and industrial poultry operations.