Chickens are the things that give us eggs, feathers, McNuggets and many other things (plastics, nappies & fertiliser). Chickens (along with ostriches) are one of the nearest things to a living dinosaur. The T-Rex and chickens share a common ancestor. They are the most common bird in the world with an estimated population of about 50 billion.
There are up to about one-hundred and fifty different British chicken breeds. Chickens can come in lots of different sizes and colours. The average hen lays 230+ eggs a year (depending if they have a proper light source in the winter). Chickens can live up to seven years and can survive through the toughest winter weather. Chickens are mostly bred for egg production.
The most common chicken known for laying is the battery hen. A battery hen is a hen that spends its whole life in a cage, and they basically do not move, unless someone comes along and rescues them from their misery. A free range hen is a hen who spends their whole life free and happy and their eggs are taken from the coop and sent to the shops, or eaten by the owner of the hens.
Sometimes (very rarely) a hen (female chicken) can change into a cockerel (male chicken) and they no longer produce eggs. It is when one of the hen’s ovaries fails and disappears that the change is triggered making the hen into a cockerel. After that, it may even start crowing. Despite this transformation, the cockerels can easily be mistaken for hens, and could slip into a flock of female hens unnoticed.
If you would like to read more the different breeds of chicken go to: Poultry Breeds
Questions…
- There are five groups of vertebrate animals, Bird is one of those groups – what are the other four?
- What organ produces the egg?
- Suggest a feature that all birds share.
- Apart from the chicken, name/describe another organism exploited by humans.
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