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!