Chickens

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Chickens can fly, but not for very long.

I once read on WikiHow that sometimes chickens in coops eat their own eggs. It normally happens when an egg accidentally breaks, the hen inspects it with her beak and discovers it's a tasty and nutritious snack. It doesn't harm the hens to eat chicken eggs, but if you don't do anything they may start to prefer eating their eggs instead of just hatching them. That's pretty gross.

While traveling in China singer Paul Simon was inspired to write one of his hits from seeing the name of a certain dish on a restaurant menu. Its was a dish that combined chicken meat with eggs.

The name of the dish was "mother and child reunion".

I’ve heard that song before.

People eat more chicken than any other kind of meat in the United States.

The longest flight of a chicken was 13 seconds.

There is a mythical creature called the cockatrice. It is basically a bipedal dragon with a rooster's head. Although it wasn't a large creature it was feared in medieval times more than even the biggest and most dangerous dragons because its eyes were so full of pure hate and evil its gaze could turn people to stone or kill them instantly, split through solid stone, and turn a once-fertile field into a barren wasteland. It was believed that cockatrice eggs were actually laid by roosters and had to be hatched by a toad sitting on it for seven years, and when the cockatrice hatches it eats the toad. About the only two things that can kill a cockatrice is either a weasel, which is supposed to be immune to its death-glare, or the sound of a rooster crowing. So people traveling to unfamiliar places would carry a live rooster with them in a cage for protection.

I remember in My Little Pony FiM, Fluttershy was actually able to stop a cockatrice from turning animals to stone, while *she* was being turned to stone by it!

Chickens live in almost all parts of the world!

When I was a child, we had a bantum hen which had chicks, and one day a bird of pray that was hovering overhead saw her chicks and went into a dive. The hen immediately flew vertically upwards and met the bird of pray half way into its dive. In other words, that hen flew up at the same speed as thebird of pray was. I believe it was a kestrel. The bird of pray was seen off as no way could it cope with that cetermined mother hen. 13 seconds is nothing compared to what I have seen hens do, though I do agree they tend to fly more (If they have not had their wings clipped) to reach certain things such as a tree than to want to keep flying. We have in the past had to get our hens back from a fair few neighbours away after they took flight, and that is quite a distance! Why one clips their wings. Was only when their wings grew back and we didn't notice that they had is when they begin to fly. They usually do this on windy days where the wind will carry them a distance, but normally they only bother to fly if they see something they want or to fly up tall trees etc. They are not like other birds which tend to fly for miles, but there again, nearly all chickens come from domesticated breeds. In other words, they are bread to have their egg laying qualities emphasized. If chickens were specifically bread for several generations with flight in mind the end result would be hens which fly a lot longer than they currently fly. Cockrels may take off and fly for much longer distances to find other hens, especially if they grew up together amongst competing cockrels and hear other hens in the distance. Duck breeds which normally hardly fly where one will rarely see them fly such as muskavies, will fly a fair distance (The males) to reach other femails. We had one or two fly off and ended up with ducks at a place about half a mile away, and that breed hardly flies.

But back to chickens. Is not that they can't fly further if they put their minds to it. Is more about the need because their size makes flying hard work! Does not mean they can't fly far as they can surprize now and then. Like I said about the bantum that flew vertically upwards a fair distance at great speed to fight off the bird of pray, and you are talking about a straight up flight of 100 to 200ft and she met the other bird feet first and there were feathers of the kestrel falling out the sky! My Dad was amazed when he saw it! Never knew hens could even do that! She never normally flew but when her chicks were under threat she went for it!

Still have the same chickens minus the Japanese bantam.When they get old and croak I probably won’t get anymore.
I don’t eat eggs that often, just as an ingredient in something I’m cooking or baking.
Had a crowing hen once.They are considered bad luck because supposedly it means someone is going to die.Usually someone wrings their neck ,so I guess it comes true for the hen.
I gave her away to someone and they named her Voodoo.Later she was eaten by a possum.

I’ve kept chickens for 20 years.
There are currently 35 chickens in my barn.

20 hens
3 roosters
9 pullets
3 cockerels.

I just finished building a new coop for the younguns today.

I’m a vegetarian, so they are just for eggs, fertilizer, and pest control. When my grandson is a little bigger I’ll get silkies again.

Used to feed the chickens Ethiopian mustard and birdseed when I worked on a farm and the eggs were delicious. One brown hen would lay blue eggs.

Here roosters and cockrels are the same thing. Male chickens. Rooster we assumed to be an American term for cockrel. Your list shows roosters and cockrels. I am intregued to know the difference in the terms you use for these?

Once had a turkey who was thick. He would go onto his perch at night with the hens, but in the morning my Mum had to pick him up off the perch for him to get down. The hens would walk through thefence. He would try but because he was massive compared to them his head would go through but not his body, and he would stay like that for hours as he didn't do reverse! He couldn't think to go backwards!
He was a big heavy thing! Eventually one night a fox got in and took him, dragged him half way into the field and gave up, only taking his head. The fox found him too big for his oven I guess?

The difference is age. A cockerel is less than 20 weeks old.

I had a giant turkey Gobbler.
His name was Major Tom.
He lived to a ripe old age but went down during a heat wave and couldn’t stand back up.
We had to put him down.
I miss my turkeys.

Then why has the price of chicken wings gone up so much over the last couple decades?

Should be cheap still if they’re so abundant.