To find a chicken’s ears, you’ll have to know where to look. The ear is a tiny opening on either side of the head surrounded by a fleshy earlobe distinguished by color. Generally, a hen with a red lobe will lay brown eggs, and a hen with a white lobe will lay white eggs, although there are a few exceptions.
The wattles are peculiar indeed. These two featherless flaps of skin hang from the bottom of the face and can range in color from red to blue to black. Like most parts of chicken anatomy, they are usually far more pronounced in roosters.
The body of a chicken is generally shaped like a horseshoe with a high head and tail. The breast is located below the head and neck, above the belly. The saddle is the area of feathers between the neck and the tail and is often quite colorful in males. Tails vary tremendously in color, arch, and size, especially between the genders. A rooster can often be distinguished by his brightly colored and high-arching tail feathers.
The legs and feet of a chicken may be bright to pale yellow, white, slate, olive, or black, all depending on breed, of course. The feet have either four or five toes (unless the bird was very unlucky indeed), and the legs are covered in overlapping slabs of skin called scales.
Spurs are sharp, bony protrusions on the back of the leg used for fighting and for defense by the valiant rooster. Contrary to popular belief, hens also have spurs, although they are usually quite small.
The skin of a chicken, which also varies in color depending on breed, is thin and tears easily. Don’t be fooled by feather color, since it does not necessarily indicate the bird’s skin color. Most have white or yellow skin, with the exception of the Silkie’s black skin. Like the yolk of a hen’s egg, a chicken’s skin will deepen in color if she is pasture raised and eats more bugs, greens, seeds, and grasses.
The feathers are an easy way to distinguish some of the breeds, but many chickens share similar colors and patterns. Feathers cover most of a chicken’s body, and in some breeds, such as the Brahma and the Faverolles, the birds have feathers on their legs or feet.
The variations in feather pattern are quite plentiful, too. In addition to a variety of earth-toned colors, feathers can have striping, penciling, wide or narrow lacing, barring, spangling, or stippling. Despite their alluring colors and styles, chickens lose their feathers each fall or winter in a process called molting.
Feathers don’t stop at the neck, either. Facial feathers include muffs, which are furnishings located on the side of the face, common in several breeds. A beard is a grouping of feathers below a chicken’s beak, and tufts are unique to the Araucana chicken, characterized by feathers growing from a small space near the ear lobe. Some breeds, such as the Polish, sport top knots: groupings of feathers in a pom-pom–like shape on the top of the head.
The key to feather health is allowing your birds to dust-bathe and preen as they see fit. (See chapter 8 for more on dust-bathing, preening, and molting.)
A chicken’s feathers are one way to identify her breed; they also indicate her overall health and vigor. A chicken’s feathers should be glossy, smooth, and bright.
The Ins
The digestive system begins with the beak. As a bird collects forage or feed in her beak, she adds some necessary digestive enzymes (contained in saliva) before the food, usually still whole, passes through her esophagus. Chickens do not have teeth, so the “chewing” process happens later (giving credence to the adage “as scarce as hen’s teeth”).
The crop, a flexible pouch located just below the chicken’s neck, is the next stop. When a bird is finding plentiful forage, the crop will swell considerably and house all of the bird’s food, from grasses to grubs. The more difficult to digest forage may remain in the crop upward of 12 hours. Consider the crop a holding area for the bulk of a bird’s sustenance.
Next, the food is moved to the bird’s true stomach, or proventriculus, where more digestive enzymes are added. The gizzard is next, where the grit you’ve provided your birds (or the pebbles they’ve picked up foraging) is put to use. Without any teeth, chickens rely on the teamwork of grit and the strong muscles of the gizzard to break down their food. After absorption of the nutrients by the intestinal walls, liquid and solid waste is released together through the bird’s cloaca, and digestion is complete. Droppings are a key indicator of health, so monitor them from time to time. The white crest on a normal, healthy dropping is the urine deposit; the rest should be light greenish brown or gray. It’s not pleasant, but don’t be too grossed out—that “waste” is compost gold, so put those nutrients to work a second time in your garden.
The reproductive system is the system most chicken keepers are concerned with; after all, eggs are the reason most people start keeping chickens. Knowing a bit more about what it takes to produce that egg will make you a better keeper.
The cock’s reproductive role is centered mostly on two testes, which unlike male mammals, are housed internally. In a flock of mixed genders, mating occurs continuously. For hens, reproduction begins in her ovary, where she develops small clusters of yolks. Through ovulation, yolks are released into the oviduct, a 25 in. (64 cm) long tube. If the hen has been mated, fertilization will happen there. (And if not, the process will still continue; you just won’t get a fertilized egg out of the deal.) The yolk moves through two parts of the oviduct, the infundibulum and the magnum; the latter is where the albumen (or egg white) is added. The third part of the oviduct, called the isthmus, is where the hen’s system adds the shell membranes. Finally, a large deposit of calcium carbonate (mostly pulled from the hen’s bones) produces the shell in the uterus (this is why it’s so important to provide added calcium to your laying hens in the form of oyster shells). Finally, after a 20-hour process, the internal chamber called the cloaca releases the fully formed egg through the vent, encased in bloom. Also called the cuticle, the bloom is a protective coating that safeguards the developing chick from bacteria that may penetrate the shell.
Pretty cool, right? Not only is the egg a perfect food, it’s a perfect structure to incubate the young bird. Most young female chickens, called pullets, reach sexual maturity between four and six months, depending on the breed and the individual bird’s lineage. When the days lengthen and the pullet is exposed to over 14 hours of daylight, her reproductive system kicks into high gear and starts egg production. Most high-production breeds will lay one egg per 24- to 26-hour cycle. If it takes longer to acquire those 14 hours of light, egg production will carry over into another day or two. Some chicken keepers choose to artificially light the coop to encourage their chickens to keep laying through the shorter days of winter. This is a widely accepted practice, but I think the winter months are a well-earned break for everyone. Considering that shortened daylight hours usually coincide with a molt, the fall and early winter are the perfect time to let the birds rejuvenate and rest. Plus, some breeds make great winter layers, no matter what you do.
Tales from the Coop
When my husband, daughter, and I moved into our home in North Carolina, we “inherited” a resident chicken—a single, sweet, skittish Delaware we named Hen Solo. She was the sole survivor of her flock, all of which had been picked off by predators over the years. By the time we started caring for her, she had been accustomed to roaming the homestead freely, eating only what she could forage (including water) and having the coop to herself.
We immediately put her on our flock’s diet of organic, soy-free feed, with grit and oyster shells as supplements. She had fresh water daily. She wasn’t laying eggs when we moved in, and she continued her dry spell through the winter and into the spring. When the days lengthened, she surprised us with one perfect beige egg. We were ecstatic. She was isolated from the rest of our flock at the time (for biosecurity reasons), so we knew the egg was hers. She was back in business.
Several weeks later, my husband came home from work one evening and collected eggs on his way in. He reported that