According to the National Chicken Council, more than 1.25 Billion Chicken wing portions (more than 100 million pounds) were consumed on Super Bowl weekend in 2012. That being said, this may well be called 'Beef Country' but I know for a fact, folks like their chickens; if not we wouldn't still be receiving phone calls asking if we have chickens for sale, four years after we raised our last batch of 700 broilers.
So you like your chicken to eat and many of you will enjoy raising a few for eggs. So lets see how you fare with chicken trivia!
When a chicken starts to eat her eggs, what is deficient in her diet?
a) vitamin b
b) attention
c) food
d) calcium
Calcium! And what many hobbyists may not know is that a layer hen’s calcium needs actually go up in hot weather and as she gets older! Common calcium deficiency symptoms in layer chickens include thin, weak eggshells and even eggs laid without a shell. Sources of calcium are limestone and/or ground oyster shell both available at your local farm store. If you recycle your egg shells and feed them back to the chickens as a source of calcium, remember to crush them up, you don't want to provoke the hens into free feeding on freshly laid eggs.
What do chickens store in their gizzard to help them chew?
a) small teeth
b) acid
c) husks and shells
d) grit
Grit! It may surprise you, or not, that chickens do not have teeth, the function of the gizzard is to grind up their food. While it is a tough muscular structure, that alone cannot achieve the powerful action needed to break down their food. They need grit to accomplish the grinding action. Free ranging birds will generally find their own, ours head to the gravel driveway, but if you lock your birds up for the winter (or any other time) you will need to feed them grit to aid their digestion. It can be bought at your local feed or farm store.
Which of these is NOT a breed of chicken?
a) Wyandotte
b) Toulouse
c) Old English
d) Hamburgh
Toulouse is a breed of goose. While next year we may well raise ducks, we will not be raising geese, we have dogs that will guard us we don't need geese.
What is the most common fowl on Earth?
a) White Leghorn
b) Rhode Island Red
c) Foghorn Leghorn
d) Old English Game
White leghorn! Beautiful bird that lays white eggs. We have a similar looking bird, the White giant, that is larger and lays brown eggs.
What colour are all of the Australian Breeds?
a) Black
b) white
c) orange
d) grey
Interestingly, they are all Black, the most famous here being the Australorp. The other Australian breeds are the Australian Langshaan, Australian Pit Game and Australian Game.
Australorp.
If you think this love of chickens is strange, then you have never walked into a chicken house after dark and heard the wonderful soothing noise chickens make as they sleep. If you wonder at so many people wanting to keep a few hens, then you have never experienced the wonder of finding a warm egg laid just for you. If, for some reason, you cannot keep your own chickens, we encourage you to find someone local to supply you with farm fresh eggs from pasture fed chickens, you will never enjoy a supermarket egg again.
I leave you with some last facts for today:
With 25 billion chickens in the world, there are more of them than any other bird species.
Roosters perform a little dance called ‘tidbitting’ in which they make sounds (food calls) and move their head up and down, picking up and dropping a bit of food. Researchers have found that females prefer males that often perform tidbitting and have larger, brighter combs on top of their heads. Why roosters have wattles
