Chickens are Friends- NOT Food!

So my title may not be entirely truthful of my position towards chickens in general. But it definitely applies to how I feel about MY chickens! And anybody that knows me knows I love my chickies, and if you don't know me, you'll find out :) So I thought it might be fun ( at least for me ;) ) to give y'all some chicken trivia! I betcha at least 3 or more of them will surprise ya!

Fact 1. Girl chickens, until they lay or are one year old, are called pullets. Once they begin laying then they are called hens. Boy chickens, before they mature (and start cock-a-doodle-doing), are called cockerels. Once they're grown up then they're called roosters, cocks, or roos- whatever suits your fancy.

Fact 2. Chickens booty holes are called vents. With that said, hens lay eggs, pee, poop all out of one hole: their vents! Fortunately, they can't poop/pee and lay an egg at the same time (if your eggs are dirty that means your nesting boxes aren't clean as they should be!)-- isn't that a relief to know?!

Fact 3. There is actually a such thing as an egg song-- except, it sounds nothing like a song but more like a distress signal. Then again, if you just popped out an egg or were about to you'd be in distress too! Click to listen, it's kinda funny and not what you'd think of "singing". Egg song! And no, this isn't my chicken.

Fact 4. It takes anywhere from 24-26 hours for a chicken to form an egg. And the longest part, which takes about 20 hours, is forming the shell! It takes A LOT of calcium ensure that the shell is good and strong! A hen could potentially lay up to 1,000 eggs in her lifetime!

Fact 5. Chickens will live for an average of 10 years, but for pet chickens its not uncommon for them to live 15 or even 20 years! A hen's prime for laying is their first year, with their production rate gradually decreasing each year.

Fact 6. When you think of birds and baths, you usually think of the bird baths filled with water. Chickens do take baths, but not like that. They take dust baths. And it's exactly as it sounds, they kick up the dirt enough and then roll around and rub in it to get dust in all their feathers. The dirt helps keep them from getting mites and gross things like that. Weird, I know. And then they spend most the rest of the day preening their feathers. Meet Elsie, our Rhode Island Red hen: (oh, and my apologies for moving the camera so much. I think another chicken was distracting me :) )

 

Fact 7. You actually don't need a rooster in order for hen's to lay eggs. Unless, of course, you want them fertilized for hatching.

Fact 8. Once an egg comes out of the hen, and before it is washed, it is coated with a protein layer called a "bloom". On a shell it has many tiny pores, and the bloom's job is to protect the pores and prevent an bacteria getting in the egg. But once the egg is washed, the bloom is gone. Hence, why you have to refrigerate your eggs. It actually doesn't matter if you refrigerate your eggs or not, just your preference! But, if the eggs have been in a fridge, you don't want to leave them out for an extended time. It can cause the eggs to "sweat", and therefore taking the bloom off and leaving the egg unprotected from bacteria. The eggs will last longer if you put them in the fridge. Here's a fun little article to learn more!

Fact 9. Chickens go through a molting process usually when the weather changes and begins getting cooler. During a molt, they begin losing their feathers, and more often than not, the hens will quit laying. They stop laying because they need the extra nutrients to get new feathers instead of laying eggs. However, some chickens can lay through a molt. Each chicken is different. The molts are essentially like a dog shedding its summer coat and growing in it's winter coat. Here's a picture of one of the worst molts. Poor chickie! (it's okay to laugh at the poor thing :)

Fact 10. Believe it or not, chickens can fly! However, they cannot fly for an extended period of time. Wild chickens need the ability to fly high enough to roost in the lower branches of trees to sleep for the night. Sometimes the chickens will fly/climb over something by using their feet to climb and flapping their wings to help them get higher. Or if something startles them, or sometimes you have no idea why, they will run, in a waddling sort of way, while flapping their wings like mad. They actually can go fairly quickly that way and its always funny to watch.

Bonus. I have not tried this (I have considered), but chickens can actually be house-trained and be kept in the house! Granted they are birds so they're kind of dusty. But I have read of stories of people that have chickens that will either run to the back door to go outside to go to the bathroom and then promptly run back inside once finished, or they just have a pile of newspapers or pads of some sort that they use.

So which one of these surprised you? Or did you know all of them??