Thursday, May 22, 2014

Chicken facts & trivia

From: www.jonespoultry.com:




  • A chicken can have 4-5 toes on each foot.

  • A chicken can travel up to 9 miles per hour.

  • A chicken takes 21 days to hatch.

  • A chicken will lay bigger and stronger eggs if you change the lighting in such a way as to make them think a day is 28 hours long.

  • A chicken's body temperature normally runs at 102-103 degrees F.

  • A chicken’s heart beats 280-315 times a minute.

  • A hen lives an average of 5-7 years but can live up to 20 years. The hen will lay eggs her entire life with production decreasing every year from year one.

  • A rooster takes about 18-20 breaths a minute, a hen takes 30-35.

  • A rooster will attack anything that he thinks will harm the hens.

  • Alektrophobia- fear of chickens.

  • Americans consume 8 BILLION chickens a year!

  • An egg starts growing into a chick when it reaches a temperature of 86 degrees F.

  • Chicken drumsticks have lower ratio of meat to bone and skin than other parts of a chicken.

  • Chicken sperm can survive in a hen up to 32 days.

  • Chickens can be cannibalistic.
    Debeaking- removing the end of beaks helps prevent cannibalism.

  • Chickens come in an infinite variety of colors and patterns.

  • Chickens lay different colors of eggs: white, brown, green, pink, and blue.

  • Chickens were domesticated about 8000 years ago.

  • Clutch- number of eggs laid in consecutive days.

  • Eating makes a chicken get hot.

  • Female chickens less than one year old are usually called pullets.

  • Heat does not kill chickens, humidity does. Chickens function fine in higher temperatures, however humidity has been know to lower a chicken’s performance and render them dead.

  • If a rooster is not present in a flock of hens, a hen will often take the role, stop laying, and begin to crow.

  • In the Middle Ages, chicken soup was believed to be an aphrodisiac.

  • It takes a hen 24-26 hours to lay an egg.

  • Laying hens average 245 eggs per year.

  • Leading poultry states are Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina.

  • McDonald’s in India does not serve beef—only chicken, mutton and fish.

  • Molting- annual loss of feathers and growth of new ones.

  • The USA is the leading chicken producer.

  • The chicken was once a sacred animal symbolizing the sun.

  • The greatest number of yolks in one chicken egg is nine.

  • The largest chicken egg ever recorded was nearly 12 oz., measuring 12 1/4" around.

  • The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

  • The record for laying the most eggs in one day is seven.

  • The waste product by one chicken in its lifetime can supply enough electricity to run a 100-watt light bulb for five hours.

  • There are four places in the US that have the word "chicken" in their name. Chicken Alaska, Chicken Bristle in both Illinois and Kentucky, and Chicken town Pennsylvania.

  • There are more chickens in the world than any other domesticated bird. More than one chicken for every human on the face of the earth.

  • There are some 200 varieties of chickens.
These are some petty interesting facts - glad I stopped over at his website!

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