In 1957, Dr. Paul Siegel started breeding chickens at Virginia Tech. His goal? Simple but bold: see what would happen if you selectively bred for body weight, generation after generation. He wasn’t looking for headlines—just following his curiosity, one clutch of chicks at a time.

Fast forward more than 65 years: Siegel’s chickens have become one of the longest-running animal research lines in the world. The results are astonishing. The chickens bred for high weight now grow to nearly twelve times the size of their leaner counterparts. That dramatic contrast has become a living, feathered archive—used by researchers across disciplines to study genetics, growth, metabolism, and immune response.

These chickens helped revolutionize poultry farming, too. Thanks to advances built on work like Siegel’s, today’s broiler chickens reach market weight in about six weeks—half the time it took in the 1950s. That means more efficient food production and less environmental impact. Not bad for a backyard bird.

But perhaps the coolest part? This wasn’t a flashy, million-dollar moonshot. It was methodical, government-funded research—supported by USDA and National Science Foundation grants, and driven by deep scientific curiosity. And it ended up benefiting not just agriculture, but medicine, genetics, and climate science, too.

In 2023, Siegel received the Golden Goose Award, which honors quirky, curiosity-driven research that ends up changing the world. Turns out, when you follow the science—even when it starts with chickens—you never know just how far it’ll fly.