鸡

Bird radical on the right is the indexing component, classing 鸡 in the bird family with 鸭 duck, 鹅 goose, 鸽 pigeon, 鹰 eagle. The radical alone makes 鸡 transparent: 'a bird' — and culture supplies the rest, since chicken is far and away the most common domesticated bird in Chinese kitchens.

Left is 又 'again/hand' — a pictograph of a right hand. In 鸡 it serves as a simplified phonetic substitute. The traditional 雞 had 奚 on the left, a 10-stroke phonetic; the 1956 reform replaced it with the 2-stroke 又 to slash the character's complexity. The sound link to jī is loose — this is a reform-era shortcut where the radical does most of the work.