3 Nephi 10:4
4 O ye people of these great cities which have fallen, who are descendants of Jacob, yea, who are of the house of Israel, how oft have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and have nourished you.

3 Nephi 10:5
5 And again, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, yea, O ye people of the house of Israel, who have fallen; yea, O ye people of the house of Israel, ye that dwell at Jerusalem, as ye that have fallen; yea, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not.

3 Nephi 10:6
6 O ye house of Israel whom I have spared, how oft will I gather you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if ye will repent and return unto me with full purpose of heart.

These verses are largely a copy of some New Testament verses from Matthew and Luke. In the Book of Mormon, they are attributed to Christ's voice before his physical appearance.

These verses would have made no sense to this audience. These people didn't have any familiarity with chickens.

The chicken, while barely possibly known to the Hebrew Culture at the time of Lehi's departure, is never referenced in any clear way in the Old Testament. Rather pigeons, guineas, ducks, geese and swans were the important domestic birds. Chickens were known but scarce to the Egyptians as early as 1500 BC, and the Greeks record chickens starting in about 500 BC. It's similarly thought that the Hebrews started using the chicken between 600 and 500 BC, probably via the Persian conquest.

But domesticated poultry of the New World was Turkeys and that for decorative feathers, not a routine food source until after Book of Mormon times. While turkeys exhibit similar behavior, they were not and would not have been in wide production just for feathers to be useful as a metaphor to the people.

Joseph Smith screwed up again.

There are enough vagaries to this that apologists will have room to wiggle to their hearts content. But it will be wiggling completely without evidence or high likelihood of probability. They'll be contorting at the fringes of microscopic, but non-zero possibility.

Further, Turkeys were domesticated in Mexico and the US Southwest at the time of Christ, so for Christ to appear anywhere where this metaphor even has a hope of being meaningful, we can then narrow down where the Book of Mormon region would have to have been.

It's not the US Heartland model, it's not the whole of the Americas, it's not the Holley map area. It can only be the Maya really.

All TBMs need is an article like this: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140318-polynesian-chickens-pacific-migration-america-science/
and they can still believe that chickens were in America during BofM times. Sure the article doesn't say they were, but since they were here earlier than first thought then they just say "See science was wrong that chickens first came with Europeans and it is only a matter of time before the BofM is proven true."

Nevermind that the earliest chickens found are about 1000 years after the BofM was over - they don't trust that, but they do trust that they came before Columbus. Strange how they selectively use science to support their claims, but that's what the believing brain does.

Like I said, they can argue and twist under the argument. It's not as tight as other arguments. It's just another anachronism and copy job from the Bible really.

This article dates the rise of the chicken in Jewish culture to about 200 BC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Israelite_cuisine

The chicken does originate in Asia, and it might have arrived in the Americas prior to Europeans. But it didn't arrive in time for the Book of Mormon.

Just like those funny horses they found in ancient America. "This proves horses were there before the BoM!" Yeah, and they were funny lookin, completely unridable, and died out thousands of years before the BoM started. Or I am misunderstanding the Wikipedia article on this.

They really can't get around the animal anachronisms, but, God, they sure do try hard.

How tedious to repeatedly engrave that on gold plates!
Lol