Arcadia Discussion Zone

I'm not familiar with the reason why a young chicken is called a poussin chicken in cooking and also the significance these chickens have in this mystery. Can anyone enlightlen me?
The other thing are the two large prepared chickens in the Poussin paintings, the 1627 'Les Bergers d' Arcadia' and the recently displayed on the forum 'Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus'.
Odd how Poussin did that with the light thing. Looks like he's having some sort of silly chicken joke to me!

I thought perhaps someone else may have seen the chickens.

Do you think that Poussin is suggesting that this shepherd is a chicken like in a coward, did the term exist back then?
Or is Poussin having some sort of joke with his friends? Quite odd.