The Incredible Chicken and The Egg.
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Facts Unknown by Many Folks!
My granddaughter raises chickens, so I get free fresh eggs every week. Her chatter about these birds piqued my interest to find facts & stories to tell her.
Here are some surprising facts about chickens:
Hens talk to their chicks before they hatch. The chicks can hear the hen through the egg’s shell, and the chicks can reply. So once the chicks hatch, they recognize their mother.
Chickens can recognize & remember over 100 faces, including those of chickens, household pets & humans.
They can recognize their own names & those of their flock mates.
When they sleep, chickens dream. They experience REM sleep, which is associated with dreams in humans.
Chickens can sleep with one eye open because they experience a sleep phase we call Uni hemispheric Slow Wave Sleep. The USWS allows one half of the brain to sleep while the other half is awake. The adaptation allows predator awareness while resting.
Chickens are the closest living relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex.
THE EGGS:
Hens will lay eggs without a rooster. A rooster is there to fertilize the eggs.
Egg color depends on the genetics of the chicken’s breed.
White calcium carbonate forms all eggshells.
In a chicken that lays blue eggs, the blue pigment deposit occurs early in the shell forming process & it sinks through the entire shell.
The deposit of brown pigment occurs late in the shell-forming process & it does not sink through the shell. So brown eggshells are white inside.
Egg taste comes from the quality of the chicken’s diet.
Hens can produce 250 to 300 eggs per year.
A hen that wants to hatch eggs is a broody hen.
Fertilized eggs take 21 days to hatch.
