Anyone who knows me personally is aware of my affiliation with chickens, but for those of you who don’t, allow me to provide you with some context. My family’s farm is diverse, and one aspect of the farm that I am the most involved with compared to the other crops we produce is our commercial chicken barn. I have been working full-time in our chicken barn for quite a while now; therefore, I see and interact with chickens daily.
Our barn can house 40,000 birds, but an average crop is usually somewhere between 33,000 and 36,000.
I rather like chickens, and I think they are very misunderstood creatures. For starters, many people are under the assumption that chickens are stupid, but this simply isn’t true. To provide you with an example of a chicken’s intelligence, consider the fact that the birds arrive on our farm the same day they are born. They’re only a number of hours old when we place them inside our barn, and within minutes, they have already figured out not only what food and water are, but, additionally, how to access them. The feed is visible on the floor, so it doesn’t require a tremendous level of brain power to figure out how to consume it. The water, however, is accessed via nipples along water lines that are suspended from the ceiling, significantly lowered so that the chicks can reach it. They have never seen a water line, or a nipple, for that matter, but within a short period of time, they have managed to figure out how to get it into their bodies.
They’re also remarkably tough animals, and because I don’t love the reputation chickens have, I thought I would share some facts about them with all of you, with this information coming from spca.bc.ca.
“1. Chickens are living descendants of dinosaurs
“Chickens are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs! Scientific evidence has proven a shared common ancestry between chickens and the Tyrannosaurus rex.
“2. Chickens aren’t completely flightless
“Chickens were domesticated about 8,000 years ago and evolved from the Red junglefowl, a tropical bird that lives in the jungle. These wild birds fly to escape predators and to roost high up in trees. Today’s domestic chickens still have the ability to fly, although not as effectively. Chickens can fly for short distances—enough to clear obstacles or reach a perch,” the web page states.
Come back tomorrow for part two.
Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash
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