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Dianne:
Our newest chicken Ginger — also known as "City Girl" — sleeps in a large cage in my bathroom at night. Ginger and I cluck and sing and have fun in the mornings while I get ready for work. Then I take her in her carrier down to the chicken pen and let her spend the day with the rest of the flock. The last couple of mornings she has become impatient with me and while I am out of the room, she squawks loudly, only to look around innocently when I check on her.
Today she was quiet, she didn't even return my clucks or songs. I thought it might be because Sukha, one of our dogs, was hanging out in the bathroom. But when it came time to load her up she looked at me like I was crazy. I finally coaxed her out of the cage, only to see that she had laid an egg.
Eggs are laid all the time here. Most have no interest in the eggs and wander away from them for hours. Not Ginger. She cussed me out for an hour this morning while I did other chores. I finally sat and held her for a while and she quietly peeped to me. Then when I put her down, she climbed back into her carrier and sat, waiting.
Some birds have been genetically altered so much that they will not sit on eggs. This makes it easier to remove the egg since the hen is not attached to it. A few of our birds will sit, a couple don't really slow down to lay they just squat, lay, and keep moving. One time this winter, I caught Al sitting on the eggs — he was a handful to chase away. After that, he would shadow me when I went to look for eggs and would try to spur me.
Ginger will be a test for me since so far I have let her have her way. I would really like her to want her time with the others more than the egg, but if her maternal needs are strong, she may chose the latter and then I will have to get used to the scoldings from her.
Hen and egg laying facts:
1. A chicken who sits on eggs is called a broody hen. When a hen goes broody her, pituitary gland releases prolactin, a hormone that causes her to stop laying, this condition lasts about seven days. (People who don't want this behavior will often kill off broody hens — they call this "culling")
2. "Culling eggs" means removing them from nesting boxes.
3. It takes approximately 21 days for an egg to hatch
4. A normal hatch takes an average of 24 hours after the first peep for the chick to fully merge.
5. Laying eggs depletes calcium in chickens. When calcium gets low, the shells on the eggs will be thin. This is why we boil and feed our hens the gathered eggs to replace the calcium loss — and for extra protein to grow feathers.
6. About 280 million laying hens produce some 65 billion eggs each year in the United States. That's roughly one hen for every man, women and child in the country. China produces the most eggs, at about 160 billion per year.
7. For every egg-laying hen confined in a battery cage, there is a male chick who was killed at the hatchery. Because egg-laying chicken breeds have been genetically selected exclusively for maximum egg production, they don't grow fast or large enough to be raised profitably for meat. Therefore, male chicks of egg-laying breeds are of no economic value, and they are literally discarded on the day they hatch, I won't go into the horrible treatment of the chicks at this time.
8. There are about 200 breeds of chickens.
9. An average factory farmed hen lays 300 to 325 eggs a year. A hen starts laying eggs at 19 weeks of age. The average life span for a factory chicken is one to two years; the normal life span of an outside chicken is three to eight years.
10. A lot goes into an egg. The hen must eat 4 pounds of feed to make a dozen eggs.
11. To produce one egg, it takes a hen 24-26 hours, and to do so, she requires 5 oz. of food and 10 oz. of water. Thirty minutes later she starts all over again.
12. As a hen grows older, she produces larger eggs.
13. A mother hen outside of the factory farm environment turns over her egg about fifty times per day (so the yolk won't stick to the sides of the shell)
14. The chicken is one of the first domestic animals, appearing in China around 1400 BC. Chicken are descendants of the red jungle fowl (gallus gallus spadiceus) that lives in Asia.
15. An egg shell has as many as 17,000 pores over its surface.
The Formation of an Egg:
The Yolk: The chicken egg starts as an egg yolk inside a hen. A yolk (called an oocyte at this point) is produced by the hen's ovary in a process called ovulation.
Fertilization: The yolk is released into the oviduct (a long, spiraling tube in the hen's reproductive system), where it can be fertilized internally (inside the hen) by a sperm.
The Egg White (albumin): The yolk continues down the oviduct (whether or not it is fertilized) and is covered with a membrane (called the vitelline membrane), structural fibers, and layers of albumin (the egg white). This part of the oviduct is called the magnus.
The Chalazae: As the egg goes down through the oviduct, it is continually rotating within the spiraling tube. This movement twists the structural fibers (called the chalazae), which form rope-like strands that anchor the yolk in the thick egg white. There are two chalazae anchoring each yolk, on opposite ends of the egg.
The Eggshell: The eggshell is deposited around the egg in the lower part of the oviduct of the hen, just before it is laid. The shell is made of calcite, a crystalline form of calcium carbonate.
The Vent: This entire trip through the oviduct takes about one day. Eggs are laid from the vent . The vent is not a "special hole" on the chicken. In fact, our chicken vet calls the vent " the sewer" because everything comes out of it: urine, feces and eggs. Makes you hungry doesn't it?
Growth of the Embryo: The fertilized blastodisc (now called the blastoderm) grows and becomes the embryo. As the embryo grows, its primary food source is the yolk. Waste products (like urea) collect in a sack called the allantois. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide gas occurs through the eggshell; the chorion lines the inside surface of the egg and is connected to the blood vessels of the embryo.
Incubation Period: The embryo develops inside the egg for 21 days (the incubation period), until a chick pecks out of the shell and is hatched.
Ginger waits for a chance to peck our foster kittens in her bathroom cage.
Ginger waits inside her carrier. Unfortunately the humans do not "get it" that she prefers to stay with them so she eventually gives up and goes out with the other chickens.