I wish that there was greater external pressure on the GB to make a change . The Australian Committee is the only recent example I know of where the Governing Body was made to revise their direction . Change certainly can ' t come from within , because any dissent is silenced through disfellowshipping . <| sep |> The sport of cockfighting had tremendous influence not only in the domestication of the chicken but also on the distribution of fowl throughout the world . After centuries of selection and breeding for numerous extremes , chickens now exist in many colors , sizes and shapes . There are more than 350 combinations of physical features known today . In 1873 , the American Poultry Association was organized for the purposes of adopting standards of excellence and establishing a way of classifying the various breeds .