Top Ten Facts About Chickens

Many chickens are fed a vegetarian diet and do feed on vegetation, but besides eating seeds, grass, and grains, they will catch and eat insects, lizards, toads or frogs, and even mice.

Chickens also enjoy mealworms when given.

Meaning they eat meat and plants.

Not just people - chickens can remember other animal faces, even members of their own flock, even after months away from each other.

Like humans and other mammals, chickens have a REM (rapid eye movement) phase when they sleep, which is the significance of dreaming.

They also have something similar to a human's sleep phase called USWS (unihemispheric slow-wave sleep). Basically, one half of their brain is asleep while the other half is awake, since they are prey animals.

Chickens will use different vocalizations to alert each other to food, call chicks, purr in contentment, and warn other flock members of predators.

Mother hens even talk to their babies when they are still in the egg with some soft purring. The unborn chicks will respond with soft, high-pitched peeps.

And roosters can make you go deaf.

They even outnumber humans 4 to 1, and there are more chickens on Earth than any other bird species.

Mother hens teach their chicks not to eat grains that could be bad for them, where to find food, and how to forage.

They also copy each other's behaviors.

Truly underrated. My favorite animal.

A hen's breed will indicate what color egg she will produce.

For example, Leghorn chickens lay white eggs, while Orpingtons lay brown eggs, and Ameraucanas lay blue eggs.

I feel like I heard that, but I don't remember where.

Many traditional or heritage breeds are increasingly at risk of becoming extinct.

This is because industrialized chicken farming has led to breeding inequalities to enhance meat and egg production with little care for preserving older breeds.