Check out these interesting facts about chickens.

Did you know…

  • Chickens are the closest living relatives of the t-rex.
  • The sounds that chickens make have actual meaning. Chickens even have different alarm calls for different predators!
  • A mature male chicken is called a rooster, cock or roo and a mature female chicken is
    called a hen. A baby chicken is known as a chick. An immature male chicken is called a
    cockerel and an immature female chicken a pullet.
  • There are over 150 types of domestic chickens.
  • Chickens were domesticated approximately 8000 years ago.
  • A chickens’ heart beats 280-315 times a minute.
  • A rooster takes 18-20 breathes a minute and a hen 30-35.
  • The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.
  • A hen can live up to 20 years.
  • A hen will lay eggs her entire life. The number of eggs she lays will decrease every year.
  • Chickens lay all different colored eggs, from white, to brown, to green, to pink, to blue.
  • The color of a hen’s first egg is the color she will lay for life.
  • It takes a hen 24-26 hours to lay an egg.
  • Chickens prefer to have private nests. A hen will build her nest by first scratching a hole in the ground. She will then pick up twigs and leaves and drop them on her back. She will then transport the supplies back to her hole where she will let the material slide off her back around the rim.
  • It takes a chick 21 days to develop in the egg.
  • A hen begins to bond with her chicks before they are born. She will turn her eggs as often as five times an hour and cluck to her unborn chicks, who will chirp back to her and to one another.
  • If a rooster is not present in a flock of hens, a hen will often take the role. She will stop laying eggs and will begin to crow.
  • A chicken has 4 or 5 toes on each foot.
  • Chickens have no teeth and swallow their food whole.
  • Chickens are social animals. They will fight to protect their family and even mourn when loved one is lost.
  • It takes 4 lbs. or more of feed to produce 1 dozen eggs.
  • The average hen lays 265 eggs per year.
  • The world record for the most eggs laid is held by a White Leghorn who, in 1979, laid 371 eggs in a year!
  • A fear of chickens is known as Alektorophobia.
  • Chickens are less nervous if their caretaker walks backwards.

Image by Martin de Witte