Sound View Farm: Chickens

Next up on the Sound View farm tour: Chickens! We have eight hens and one rooster at Sound View. Hens are the female chickens and roosters are the males. Here are a few of our chickens.

Red Junglefowl Photo: eBird.org

Where do chickens come form?

Chickens come from dinosaurs! I’m not joking. After scientists mapped the chicken genome in 2004, they discovered that chickens are likely the closest living animals related to Tyrannosaurus Rex. Whenever our chickens run towards me, all I can see are little raptors. Fast forwarding a few million years, chickens were likely domesticated from the Red Junglefowl found in Southeast Asia. This bird still exists in the wild today. Predicting when chickens were domesticated is a little tricky because scientists believe that domestic chickens still mated with wild Junglefowl for some time. Best guesses are that chickens were domesticated in China around 8 thousand years ago. Today there are somewhere between 300-500 breeds of domestic chicken. There are also around 3 chickens for every human on Earth!

These egg incubating ovens from Egypt are still used today. Find out more here: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/egypt-egg-ovens

Why were chickens domesticated?

Scientists believe chickens were actually first domesticated to fight each other. This past time may also have been what spread chickens around the world. Today, making chickens fight is illegal in the United States. As chickens spread around the world, they were used mainly for their eggs and meat. They also became important symbols in many cultures. Ancient Egyptians discovered how to artificially incubate eggs, getting them to hatch without the mother hen sitting on them. This increased the popularity of the chicken. Today chickens are still used for eggs and meat. They are also often kept as pets and bred to be show birds.

Dust Bath Time! Photo: https://www.backyardchickencoops.com.au/

Other chicken facts

Chickens are omnivorous, meaning they eat both plants and meat. Generally the meat that chickens eat are insects, but they will also eat rodents and lizards as well. Even though we generally see chickens walking around on the ground, they can fly for short distances. Chickens can make around 30 different sounds. I wonder what all of them mean! Studies have been done showing that chickens have a concept of numbers, understand that objects exist even when they cannot see them, can solve basic puzzles, and remember faces of humans and other animals. Their heart beats around 300 bpm where the resting heart rate of an adult human is typically between 60-100 bpm. They also take dust baths and can see ultraviolet light.