Inevitable posted:

Hey everyone, do you like chickens? Let's talk about chickens in this thread.


Chickens lay eggs, which makes them one of the more useful pets. It's like, hey, your little feathery pal just gave you some breakfast right out of their combo rear end/vagina! That's pretty cool. Dogs don't do that. Neither do cats.

There are different kinds of chickens you can get. I have a Rhode Island red and a barred plymoth rock. I used to have an Americauna that laid green eggs but she battered her head against a wall until she died of a broken neck. Chickens can be kind of stupid.

One thing that sucks about chickens, and I guess most animals, is that they do crap a lot. And you have to clean it. But one weird thing that some people do is "the deep litter method" where they don't actually clean the chicken crap all winter long. They just put more hay on top of the crap, and then more hay on top of that after the chickens have crapped on that for a while. The crap underneath starts to compost and then this makes it warmer in the henhouse so the chickens are happier. I don't know if this is a good idea or not. It seems a little gross, but hey, if it works.

Anyway. if anybody else has something to say about chickens, or maybe you have questions, or maybe you'd like to post some pictures of chickens, this is the thread for you!

Darf posted:

im gay?

Darf posted:

cluck cluck?

im gay?

quote:

A British couple was surprised to witness their pet hen Gertie gradually transforming into a rooster. No, this is not an early April Fools' Day prank. Chickens really can undergo natural sex changes.

The first sign that something was afoot with Gertie was that she stopped laying eggs, her owners, Jim and Jeanette Howard of Huntingdon, England, told the local media. Next, she began strutting around their garden and crowing like a rooster. Over the next few weeks, Gertie put on weight and developed wattles beneath her chin, a feature normally exhibited only by males. She also grew dark brown plumage and a scarlet cockscomb atop her head, both male traits.

''I know it sounds ridiculous but I can assure you it's all true," Jim Howard told cambridge-news.co.uk. "People think it's a bit weird but apparently its one of those things that does happen."

"Sex reversals do, in fact, occur—although not very frequently," states a 2000 report published by the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. "To date, however, spontaneous sex reversal from male to female has not been reported."

That's because the mechanics of this biological phenomenon seem to work in only one direction. Normally, female chickens have just one functional ovary, on their left side. Although two sex organs are present during the embryonic stages of all birds, once a chicken's female genes kick in, it typically develops only the left ovary. The right gonad, which has yet to be defined as an ovary, testes, or both (called an ovotestis), typically remains dormant.

Certain medical conditions—such as an ovarian cyst, tumor or diseased adrenal gland—can cause a chicken's left ovary to regress. In the absence of a functional left ovary, the dormant right sex organ may begin to grow, according to Mike Hulet, an associate professor at Penn State University's department of poultry science.

"If the activated right gonad is an ovotestis or testes, it will begin secreting androgens," Hulet told Life's Little Mysteries. Androgens are the class of hormones that are largely responsible for male characteristics and are normally secreted by the testes. "The production of androgen would cause the hen to undergo behavioral changes and make it act more like a rooster."

The hen does not completely change into a rooster, however. This transition is limited to making the bird phenotypically male, meaning that although the hen will develop physical characteristics that will make her look male, she will remain genetically female. So while the hen will no longer lay eggs, she won't be fathering any offspring, either.

As for Gertie, the Howards have renamed the hen Bertie after her sex change.

Funky See Funky Do posted:

For some reason I had it in my head for years that roasting a whole chicken was hard but it really isn't! I just shoved a half a lemon and some onion up its arse, squeezed the other half over it, rubbed with olive oil and salt and gently caress a bug just flew into my head.

Funky See Funky Do posted:

For some reason I had it in my head for years that roasting a whole chicken was hard but it really isn't! I just shoved a half a lemon and some onion up its arse, squeezed the other half over it, rubbed with olive oil and salt and gently caress a bug just flew into my head.

Inevitable posted:

Did you know that chickens have been known to change their sex? It's true, it's called spontaneous sex reversal. Here's an article

http://www.livescience.com/13514-sex-change-chicken-gertie-hen-bertie-cockerel.html

Darf posted:

Did you kill the chicken first?

Dead Precedents posted:

Inevitable posted:

You guys are trolling and please re-read the rules.

No. 6 posted:

Not

quote:

turkey eggs are rarely used for eating and cooking for two main reasons. The first is that they are too valuable for human consumption. The turkey hen is larger and requires more time to come into egg production than the chicken hen.
Also, because certain feed ingredients can be transferred by the hen to the egg, these ingredients must be cleared as safe by government agencies. Although many of the ingredients have been cleared for use in laying chicken hen feeds, these same ingredients have not been cleared for turkey hens, therefore these eggs can not be legally sold for human consumption. The turkey egg has thicker and tougher shell membranes and thicker shells than chicken eggs, making them more difficult to break than chicken eggs.

No. 6 posted:

My wife's grandfather used to raise fighting cocks.

Ruggan posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPGW0SRFKw

Ruggan posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPGW0SRFKw

Ruggan posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPGW0SRFKw