Chicken Month
You’ve loved to see them in farms, and you’ve loved to see them on your plate! Everyone loves chickens. And what better to celebrate chickens than by naming an entire month after them! That’s right – September is officially Chicken month! Share our love for our winged companions today and check out these 100 super fun facts about chickens!
Chicken Facts
1. Chickens have full-color vision!
2. In the UK, every hour, up to 12000 birds are used in each abattoir!
3. Wild chickens can survive anywhere between 5 to 11 years in their natural habitat!
4. Only female chickens are grown in the egg industry – the male ones are killed.
5. Chickens love to bathe in the dust even more than water!
6. Chickens can tell time! They use the position of the sun to know what time of the day it is.
7. Chickens are great navigators! They use the position of the sun and stars to figure out the direction of food and shelter.
8. Mother hens talk to their unborn babies through the shell.
9. The baby chicks often respond back through the shell too! The next time you see a mother hen and her egg, peep in and see if you can hear their adorable conversation!
10. Chickens are more intelligent than little children!
11. Chickens can identify hidden and unobvious objects, which is called ‘object permanence’ in psychology.
12. The bigger the wattle of the rooster, the more attractive he becomes to hens! Such stud potential!
13. Roosters perform a characteristic mating dance called ‘tidbitting’ to woo hens.
14. ‘Tidbitting’ involves moving their heads up, down and sideways, flaring their eyes and making a characteristic call.
15. Chickens are the closest living relatives of the Tyrannosaurus Rex aka a fearsome dinosaur!
16. Chickens are super brave! They survive up to 90% of predator attacks in the wild.
17. In India, roosters are taught to fight and contests are held for them!
18. Chickens originate from tropical rainforests.
19. Chickens have a greatly developed cerebral cortex.
20. Tournaments are conducted in Southeast Asian villages where roosters fight, and the strongest cock wins them all!
21. They have social orders in the wild, wherein each chicken knows its place in the social rank.
22. Chickens are great at math! Scientific studies have shown evidence of mathematical reasoning in chickens!
23. Wild chickens lay only 10-15 years a year during mating season!
24. Chickens love eating grass! They slurp it just like we eat spaghetti!
25. Chickens dream just like humans do!
26. Studies in chickens have exhibited REM sleep which means that their brains are greatly developed.
27. Chickens make great playtime companions. They play, jump, run and even lounge!
28. Chickens are quite the opposite of their name – they are super brave, and defend their young ones from predators bravely!
29. Chickens have exhibited great self-control which is uncharacteristic of birds!
30. The average domesticated hen lays 300 eggs a year!
31. Chickens also suffer from depression and other disorders.
32. Chickens have pain receptors, which means they can feel pain and distress.
33. The Halal way of killing a chicken entails minimum pain and blood-spill.
34. In South East Asian and African countries, roosters are sacrificed to Gods!
35. Chickens have developed a language of their own! They communicate with more than 24 distinct sounds, which include warnings and purrs!
36. Chickens have a great memory. They can identify more than a hundred different faces of members of their own species!
37. The record for the most number of yolks in one egg is a whopping nine!
38. If a hen has white earlobes, it will lay white eggs.
39. If a hen has red earlobes, it will lay brown eggs!
40. The largest chicken egg weighed a grand 12 ounces and had two yolks!
41. Chicken eggs get larger in size as the hen grows older!
42. Chickens could make great engineers! They have exhibited great structural reasoning in scientific research.
43. The USA eats nine billion chickens a year!
44. There are more chickens on earth than there are humans! China has the world’s largest population of chickens! The USA comes second!
45. The chicken has been domesticated for more than eight thousand years!
46. A chicken’s heart beats about three hundred times a minute!
47. Chickens use different calls to identify different predators!
48. Chickens can survive quite a long time without heads!
49. A headless chicken can run the entire length of a football field before falling dead!
50. A chicken can run a maximum of 9 miles per hour!
51. The world record for most number of eggs laid in a day is seven!
52. There are more chickens in the world than any other species of birds!
53. The chicken is indigenous to Asia!
54. Some chickens can even lay blue or green eggs!
55. Chicken wings weren’t eaten till 1964!
56. A restaurant owner out of food served chicken wings to his customers, creating the famous Buffalo wings!
57. A scientist kept a chicken’s heart tissue alive for a whopping 20 years after it died!
58. For all the vegetarians out there, there is a mushroom called Laetiporus which tastes exactly like fried chicken! It is even called the ‘Fried Chicken Mushroom!
59. A Mughal dish involves rice served with a chicken stuffed inside a turkey stuffed inside a goat!
60. The Romans also roasted chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a goose stuffed inside a pig stuffed inside a cow! Mamma mia!
61. Colonel Sanders called the evolved KFC franchise chicken the ‘worst fried chicken he’d ever tasted’!
62. Before the Beijing Olympics, Usain Bolt ate a hundred Chicken McNuggets a day for ten days, and won three gold medals!
63. The chicken is evolved from the red jungle fowl!
64. The binomial of the chicken is Gallus gallus domesticus.
65. Chickens can fly at least the height of a fence!
66. The chicken was the first bird to have its genome sequenced in 2004!
67. Since there is a strict hierarchy in the chicken world, the hen can eject the rooster’s sperm after mating if she doesn’t find him suitable enough! Talk about the friend zone!
68. The rooster’s comb on top of his head is associated with his virility!
69. The rooster announces to his brood that he has found food with a characteristic call!
70. There are more than two dozen chicken breeds in the world!
71. A group of chickens is called a flock!
72. If the white of a chicken egg is cloudy, it is fresh.
73. In Gainesville, Georgia, it is illegal to eat fried chicken with anything except your hands! Talk about table etiquette!
74. The maximum time recorded for a chicken flight is 13 seconds!
75. A chicken’s beak is capable of bleeding!
76. A chicken can lose its feathers if it is stressed, causing baldness.
77. Chickens cannot taste sugar!
78. Chickens can taste salt!
79. Baby chickens are called chicks.
80. Male chickens are called roosters, cocks or cockerels!
81. Female chickens are called pullets or hens.
82. Chickens don’t pee. It is mixed in with the poop.
83. A chicken, just like humans, is about 75% water!
84. The amount of light is what makes chickens lay eggs.
85. Chickens were first domesticated in India and China!
86. Chickens have more bones in their necks than giraffes and humans!
87. Chickens mourn after a chicken dies.
88. The oldest chicken ever recorded is Muffy, who is 22.
89. A mother hen turns her egg around almost fifty times a day!
90. In Japan, people eat fried chicken and strawberry shortcake on Christmas Eve!
91. The fear of chickens is called alektorophobia!
92. Over four hundred and fifty-two million hens are used every year to lay eggs.
93. Chickens are omnivores – they eat bugs, berries, fruit, roots and even grass!
94. Chickens are just like ostriches! Both eat rocks and gravel to digest their food!
95. Chickens will get less nervous if you walk into their coop barefoot!
96. Chickens are passive and docile at night, making them easier to catch.
97. Chicken eggs have the same nutrition regardless of color!
98. The waste made by a chicken in its lifetime can be used to generate enough electricity to power a 100W bulb for five hours!
99. A chicken has to eat a pound of feed to lay 3 eggs!
100. A rooster was chosen as the mascot of the 1998 Fifa World Cup!
Did you know them all or did they surprise you? Did these facts turn you vegan? What came first – the chicken or the egg? Let us know in the comments below and tell us why you love chicken!
*Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are a result of research by the author and the author alone. This article does not aim to hurt the sentiments of any individual or community. This article may be subject to change without prior notice.