Solid white (chicken plumage)

In poultry standards, solid white is coloration of plumage in chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) characterized by a uniform pure white color across all feathers, which is not generally associated with depigmentation in any other part of the body. Color is an important feature of most living organisms. In the wild, color has great significance affecting the survival and reproductive success of the species. The environmental constraints which lead to the specific colors of birds and animals are very strong and individuals of novel colors tend not to survive. Under domestication, mankind has transformed all the species involved which have thus been freed from environmental pressures to a large extent. Early color variants were mostly selected for utility reasons or religious practices. In more recent centuries color varieties have been created purely for ornament and pleasure, fashion playing a surprisingly large part in their development. A bewildering array of colors and patterns can now be found in the domestic fowl. In the last decades white plumage color has become essential for the efficient processing of broilers and most types of meat-type poultry. Slaughterhouses and meat processing plants require poultry with a white or very light undercolor to produce carcasses without the typical "hair", which colored chickens have, that necessitates singeing after plucking. There are several chicken breeds having solid white as the most typical plumage color, such as Leghorn, Dorking, Bresse Gauloise, Polish, Wyandotte and others. And there are many other breeds better known by their colored varieties, which also have a solid white variety, such as Plymouth Rock, Orpington, Rhode Island Red, Jersey Giant and others.