Joho the Blog
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Fertile or fertilized?

Is it possible these are just RFID chips in case the wolf gets into the henhouse?

I struggled in the market yesterday with "free range chicken broth" myself. I studied the box and couldn't figure out whether it was broth from free range chickens or just free range water used for the broth. I suspect the latter.

I don't know what I'm talking about, so this information may not be accurate, but I've heard that brown eggs are more likely to have blood spots than white eggs. Around the Boston area, local eggs are brown, which makes life difficult for people who both want to buy local and eat kosher. (Eggs with blood spots aren't kosher.)

If "free range" also means brown eggs, that might explain the higher number of blood spots.

Matthew, we do keep kosher and they are white eggs.

Just becasue it's on the Internet doesn't make it true, but American Egg Board says here (http://www.aeb.org/faq/general-faq.html) it indicates a fresh egg.

Here's all you ever wanted to know about eggs,
http://www.eggs.org.nz/general.htm

Blood spots are at the bottom,
basically, factory eggs are checked and the spotted ones not sold in stores, but they are harmless.

Why is it that about 10% of the "free range" eggs we buy have blood spots on their yolk?

Umm, because you are eating fetuses?

Ima, apparently not. We're eating eggs, not fetuses. According to the site that Paul links us to:

"Less than 1% of all eggs produced have blood spots. These tiny red spots do not indicate a fertilized egg. They are actually caused by the rupture of a blood vessel on the yolk surface during egg formation."

Since the term "free range" has come up, see http://www.eco-labels.org/label.cfm?LabelID=111.
It says free range applies to poultry, not eggs, and is essentially meaningless.

We're eating eggs, not fetuses.

Thanks for clarifying. Why not eat snake eggs, or human eggs for that matter? It would be equally disgusting.

Why is it that about 10% of the "free range" eggs we buy have blood spots on their yolk?

Less than 1% of all eggs produced have blood spots.

David, what happened to 9% of the eggs in 24 hours?

Kids: "More (strike)ovaltine(/strike) blood spots please!"

(strike tag not working)

The free range eggs maybe aren't being as well candled as the factory farmed eggs.

And, yes, eggs are disgusting.

And, yes, eggs are disgusting.

Then why eat them?

Ima, eggs enable many foods I like. Plus, done right, omelets and scrambled eggs do not disgust me.

eggs enable many foods I like

Enable? Not sure what you mean by that. Message from chickens and other sentient life forms: please stop f**king torturing us worse than you have the Iraqi prisoners. Our capacity to feel pain is no different than your own.

Thank you,

Your fellow earth inhabitants

P.S. "Free Range" is a joke.

Enable=Cakes et al. generally need eggs.

FWIW, I've been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for 25 years because of animal rights.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm sure you're well aware that there are plenty of vegan alternatives to eggs. Cakes and the like can certainly be made without eggs. Here are some examples.

How do chicken's reproduce? Do they have intercourse?

Well John, it's interesting you ask that question, as chickens actually live in symbiosis with a plant called Bernard, which produces eggs that the chicken then warms up to produce chicks (i.e. baby chickens) or takes them and simply hands over to humans to eat. A bit like sparow-potatoes. Take care John.

How do you determine the sex of a baby chick

check to see if it has a cock or/and balls!

I guess Ima Hog doesn't realize that chickens produce eggs constantly whether they are fertilized or not and one animal or another will eat them whether they are free in the wild or in captivity. Most eggs are not fertilized. Also, I guess its safe to say that making people get naked is better than cutting their head off and videotaping it for public viewing on the internet.

HOW DO CHICKENS HAVE SEX?????

Is it possible to check the sex of a chicken that is 12 weeks old?

I love chicken sex does any one have any randy chickens I can use?

GET A LIFE: EVERYTHING HERE IS DUMB

dear shannon, yes it very possible to check the sex of a chick.A lot of chickes are sexed at birth so to speak, but in your case a 12 week old chick will be quite mature by now,if the chick is quite a bit larger than the other chicks and the comb is quite big then you have a rooster.
hope that helps you out

First,I have chickens and have had between 2 and 36 for almost 25 years.Yes chickens have sex my rooster mounts his hens daily.There are no external sex organs on a chicken they are inside the vent.Chickens only have one opening for everything.egg pee poo same place.A hen makes a new egg every 18-26 hours using 4oz. feed 10oz.water and if left in nest another hen or rooster will eat it.I have to collect them every day. its not always a blood spot,yolk color is determined by diet (corn = yellow) I have amerucans that lay green eggs I also have rhode island reds that lay brown eggs. If I feed them odd things like table scrapes The yolks change color a little bit. Adding berries or ketchup gives them dark redish spots on the yolks.Basicly eggs come out everyday that a chicken is fed properly and will be eaten by someone or something no matter what you do or dont do, unless the rooster fertilized the egg and the hen sits on it and hatches it.I have only seen the later happen six times (six chicks) in 25 years.

eggs are yummy.

you are all crazy

But how do they.... have sex???

how do you tell the sex of a chicken

Are you guys all gay?

lmao you guys are awesome, chicken sex rules

please give me pitures of how chicken reproduce

how do chickens have sex?

YES!!! we have discovered and settled the case that chickens do not have balls do u agree?

chickens, like all birds, have sex by essentially pressing small butt-hole like openings (which the male and female have - the male doesnt have a anything to swing!) together, allowing sperm to get into the female. Sexing birds is hard (no weiner, etc) - but I think you can tell from colour in chickens. Weirdly enough, in chickens the sex chromosomes are Z and W but the male is ZZ and the female is WZ - the reversal of what happens in mammals like us (men=XY women=XX)

why do hens eat their own eggs? i have 6 hens and for the last two weeks have had no eggs, i discovered last night that the hens are eating them as soon as they lay them ?

Can my friend David continue having sex with his chickens?

FIRST thAnkS FOR YOUR doing IN THIS site .
I AM FROM LIBYA.
SOME friends TELL ME ABOUT YOUR SITE AND TOLD ME I CAN ASKE YOU SOME QUESTIONS .
NEW CARE MAN FOR CHICKEN AND NEED TO KNOW
HOW TO CARE THE CHICKEN AND LINEAGES FOR THE CHICKEN .
BEST REGARDS.

HI MR DAVED.
FIRST thAnkS FOR YOUR doing IN THIS site .
I AM FROM LIBYA.
SOME friends TELL ME ABOUT YOUR SITE AND TOLD ME I CAN ASKE YOU SOME QUESTIONS .
NEW CARE MAN FOR CHICKEN AND NEED TO KNOW
HOW TO CARE THE CHICKEN AND LINEAGES FOR THE CHICKEN .

BEST REGARDS.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAh My 12 chicks just hatched today on HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!! SSSSPPPOOOOKKKKKKKYYYYYYYY

SO chickens have no sex organs...but they have sex...i was told sex organs were in the wings, wasssup with these damn chickens?

this is chicken shit

who do chilens breed?

this page is inapropriate

Thank you sir,
This site has been most informative. I have always wondered how chickens had sex and now thanks to google and you're site I know. I happen to think that I am a better person for knowing.
Thanks for making me a better person.
Yours
Twisty

how do chickens have babies!>?

jake

They lay eggs you tit!

And I had babies with one of my chickens the other day. It started out as casual sex but we got a bit more serious a few months ago. Chickens are the best sex I've ever had. Even frozen ones are good.

I have chickens, was actually googling for how to sex them. (Turns out the Japanese are pretty much world experts in this area).

This is about the 2nd most funny thing I found tonight, the first was http://www.mailorderchickens.org

thanks for the laughs...

what the fuuuu........

Thanks i always wondered how chickens had sex too =P Thanx google for finding this site also! It is a ausume search site!!!

chicken sexing is easy for some breeds and tough for some breeds. my barred rocks can be sexed by sight, the females have a near perfect white spot on their heads. there are some hybrids that can be sexed my their total color. females one color, males another.

I was eating a chicken... then I got curious about 'em. You guys need to go to www.Kentuckyfriedcruelty.com. Its friggin' hilarious! Pam Anderson wants us to save the chickens. hee hee. Chickens have no pee pees.

this seems to be like a chicken chat room instead of asking questions about chicken!! haha
so funny
LOL =]

the eggs from factory hens are not fertile these hens don`t even know cocks eggsist!!!

i am a chicken and i get mounted daily by my cockerel lover. we make chickens like me. Do you want to mount me and feed me corn to make the yolks yellow. healthy babies is what we need.

wateva peeps ur all weird....pfft wondering how chickens have sex i have an idea...........go watch them do it then!!! duh duh duh duh goshhh....

yeah um chikens dont need coks to have sex!!!they use dildoz!!!!and yeah i think my neighbeer wantz to do it wit my chix!!!!scary♥
they are bantam and they are sexi tssss!!!!lmfao!!!

myspace rules!!! thnx good bye!!!♥♥♥

my myspace name is hottie♥ tryin find meh biactch!

CHICKENS RULE!!!

okay instead of the perverted questions i need help: 3 mix breed chicks were born 10 days ago and i need to know their sex. we already have 2 roosters and we DONT need anymore. 1 is a mix between brown leghorn & White Leghorn. another is a mix between a brown leghorn(rooster) and a black astralorp(sp?). and last another is a brown leghorn & a white leghorn. Please! we need to sell the chicks but i would like to know the sex because i want to keep one.

Amanda,

Sexing baby chicks is not a job for an ametuer, believe it or not it takes some serious training to even get close to the 90% accuracy that most hatchery sexors achieve. I understand that vent sexing becomes even more difficult after the first day.

At 10 days you are pretty much out of luck from what I have read, that is until they start showing signs of sexual maturity at around 4-8 weeks.

If you're missing eggs, you probably have a chicken snake. They love to eat eggs, put a plastic egg in the nest. When he eats it. he dies.

man killing snakes with plastic eggs...thats inhumane...the snake would die then it would decompose and the plastic egg would jsut be left sitting there poluting our planet, siigh what has our world come to

how do you tell a 4week old baby chicks sex?

I too was curious about how chickens have sex. I knew the hens only had one opening (the cloaca) for everything, but I didn't know what happened for them to get fertilized....if I understand now correctly, according to the one comment up above, the hen and the rooster rub their 'vents' together...what a concept. What got me thinking about it in the first place was that my wife said someone sent her an email with an attachment of a human a**hole having sex with a chicken, which must have killed the chicken painfully. Then she and I were discussing the fact that the alimentary canal exits the chicken at the cloaca in the same orifice where the egg exits. (that much I knew) In all likelihood the chicken ***ker completely destroyed the interior of the chicken in the process. NOW THAT IS CRUELTY! I love to eat chicken, that is why they exist, but anyone who wants to have sex with a chicken ought to be raped by by something equivalently painful that rips their intestines out in the process.

Hi, we got 9 chicks and we don't know what sex they are!! They are 5 weeks old and mille fleur bantams. I thought that the males had the crown on the head whereas my partner says that they both have it??!!!
Any help appreciated as I don't want a load of noisey cocks in my garden!!

How do you determind the sex of a chick?
Also how do you know if your chicken coop is safe for the chickns from any creater that sees them as pray?

Ok . Chicks can be sexed from day one. Lift tail , press down if male little bump will apear. Roosters have a bump on the lower area. very hard to see. A hen does not have to be bred everyday. once every 12 day's. Roosters keep a harem of 10-13 hens . when they mate the rooster jumps on the back and rubs side to side. same as hen . If fed proper and water available will produce egg daily. Not every hen can produce an egg. behind the breast towards the tail (Think wish bone) if not at least two fingers wide hen will never lay an egg (30 weeks old ) there longevity on producing eggs are approximate 40 weeks after first lay. normal feed conversion is 1/3 lb of feed per hen daily morning prefered while cool. best temp is between 60-85 deg. If saving eggs to hatch best placed in controlled temp till ready between 64-68 deg. Egg will not hatch if submerged in water .

CHICKENS FUCKING is just fucken nasty. chickens fuck on top of one a nother like we do. CHICKENS FUCKING! CHICKENS FUCKING!CHICKENS FUCKING! CHICKENS FUCKING!CHICKENS FUCKING! CHICKENS FUCKING!CHICKENS FUCKING! CHICKENS FUCKING!

CHICKEN SEX IS THE BEST!!!! But...billy the chicken exploded when having intercourse :(

i love chickens, they like to fuck each other!!! and i wanna rape one - it sounds cool!!! :D

can chickens get H.I.V?

Message to Ima,

Get a f*cking life you chicken hugging mother f*cker!

Sincerely yours,

Jackel

Ahaha, aside from all the spammers, a very funny and interesting read. I was going to ask how to tell my Leghorn's sex, but I see that it is quite hard without a picture or 'hands-on' info lol A site that helped me was: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1889/20865

PS. Lmfao at the 'mail order chicken' site :P

HOW DO CHICKENS HAVE SEX????????? I NEED TO KNOW!!!!

First of all,free range chickens mean,normally on a chicken farm hens are kept in very small cages and when there eggs come out they roll down onto a conveier belt and are taken,free range chickens have acres upon acres to roam and yes there is going to be roosters,so there egg is indeed fertile.When they leg there eggs on the acres upon acres the farmer gets the fun task of finding it which make take a few days,so the few days the farmer took to find the egg the egg had begun growing and the first thing to start growing is all its blood vessels,so the blood spot you see and are eating was actually going to be a chickens vein.

well what a load of tossers taliking bout this all night i stumbled into here and doubt i will ever return however I HAVE CHICKENS how strange but your all fooked IF YOU HAVE A ROOSTER then if hes doing his job every egg you eat is fertile THINK ABOUT IT bye you all piss me off

Ignoring all the spam, and worthless comments here, if any of you are serious about chickens and would like help or a place to ask questions, or post photos, please join us at BackYardChickens Forum. A REAL forum with serious comments and answers to your concerns. None of the bull crap (minus the few LIGIT replies) there is here. Click the link. Spammers not wanted. Serious chicken keepers only. http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/index.php

My friend was wondering what kind of life do barn hens have in comparison to free range hens. Does the dust-bathing make them any happier?

So eggs arent neccessarily fertilized when they are laid?

So assuming an egg isnt fertilized, how does it then become fertilized? Does the sperm from the rooster permeate the shell?

I have 19 chickens that are free range. Basicily free range chickens aren't kept in cages all day. They have access to fresh grass.

Silly hippies. Eggs and chicken meat are both delicious. And good for you.

Not all eggs are fertilized if you have a rooster. The only way to tell if an egg is fertilized is to candle the egg.

I was wondering how to tell what gender a chick is at like 1 and a half weeks old.... does ANYONE know???????

we started to talk about this subject with eggs from the hens ass for breakfast today. Finnaly we found this page through Google, thank´s God. One question remaines: How can the rooster get his sperm into the hen, is it just by pressing the butt holes to each other? And also when they have sex the rooster is sitting on the back of the hen and picking her comb, why is that and is there any effect from that? Just answer this please so we can leave the table this morning.

you can tell the sex of a chick the day its born. look at the "cockscomb" or the "le creste". its on top of the head...if its higher then its a boy if its lower its a girl.

""HOW DO CHICKENS HAVE SEX?????""

they dont....

the hen lays the egg then the rooster goes in and fertilizes it.

Thanks for the info! It helped alot. The rest provided a good laugh.

w/o having sperm, the egg will never hatch into a chick

I HOPE a lot of this is just joking around. I am rather shocked that you vegan non egg eaters have made a point to comment that eating eggs is cruel, and yet sexual activities with chickens is not? You must realize that this would result in the death (a rather horrid death) of the chicken. I can't believe anyone would find that funny.

Anyway, lots of people are asking, but not many concrete answers are being given.

Chickens lay eggs regardless of exposure to a rooster. Most commercial eggs are not fertilized. To tell if an egg is fertilized look at the yoke. A fertilized egg will show a white ring on the surface of the yolk. A blood spot can occur on fertile or infertile eggs, and as another person said is a broken blood vessel.

You CANNOT tell if an egg is fertile by candling it. Only if a chick is forming, by around day 9, that is the purpose of candling to determine chick development so non developing eggs can be discarded. You must break the egg open to tell if it's fertile. But if the hen was exposed, you can bet she's fertile.

Chickens procreate by the rooster mounting the hen while holding on to the feathers on the back of her head. He does this to balance himself. He then lines up his vent with hers, and semen is deposited just inside her vent. The little guys swim on up where they belong and are stored there, fertilizing eggs as they form inside the hen. The hen will lay fertile eggs for about two weeks, even without further coupling.

Hens are happiest when they are exposed to a rooster, in that event you are indeed eating chicken fetuses. In the case of unfertilized eggs, you are just eating an egg. The same kind of egg that humans have, but bigger and with a shell.

To tell how fresh and egg is, place it in a bowl of water so that it is completely submerged and is covered by several inches of water. A fresh egg will lay on it's side, an old egg will have one end floating up, a rotten egg floats completely on the surface. This is because as the egg ages, an air pocket forms.

For the record, eggs are not hard when they are laid, they are quite soft. In just a matter of seconds, the egg dries and hardens, it's amazing.

The chicken does not appear to have any discomfort from laying an egg. She will start making a bunch of racket about two or three minutes later, my theory is because she's proud of herself. They do not make the OUCH that hurt noise, they make the "HEY COME LOOK" noise. Anyone who watches their chickens closely can tell the difference. It is my opinion from watching chickens lay eggs that they experience little or no discomfort from the actual laying.

Free range eggs (legally) only means that the chicken has access to the outside. So it doesn't mean that your eggs came from chickens who got to live a natural life going wherever she darned well pleased. Usually these hens are kept, without a rooster in a large pen with access to the outside It does mean that she wasn't penned up in a tiny cage with four or more other hens. Sadly, many chickens live this way, so buy the free range and cage free eggs, or find someone who keeps them near by.

Pasture fed, means that the hen was penned, (although it can also be a free chicken) on grass, and often these pens are moved daily. This is also a good alternative to regular store eggs.

Fertilized eggs must be marked on the box as being fertilized. Most eggs you buy from the store are NOT fertile. If the box doesn't say, then here in the US they were not exposed to a rooster.

As far as sexing chickens, some breeds are called sex links, they are crosses that have one color of pullets, and one color of roosters. Usually with other breeds you must look inside the vent of the chick. This is very difficult and takes many years to learn. We usually just wait until they are bigger, then it's obvious because roosters have different feathers than hens.

These creatures are really a joy to keep, and give us eggs, enjoyment and even company. My chickens love to get scratches and treats. I love my chickens, and try to offer them the highest quality of life I can.

I don't get it.

A friend of mine reports that a chicken farmer told him that a rooster typically mounts, on average, 5,000 hens a week. I replied that this was absurd, guessing the frequency might, just might, approach 20 per day, for the most active and in a large coop of hens. Does anyone out there have any serious and reliable information on the subject?