If you’ve Googled your way to
this blog looking for poultry porn, you’ve come to the wrong place. Sorry to disappoint you, Foghorn, but this is
simply an informational and scientific discussion of chicken mating.
If, however, you are offended by
the concept of animals having nonchalant sex in public, this may be the wrong
place for you, as well. I grew up on a
farm so animals having sex everywhere
– all the time was simply part of my
childhood, for goodness sake! So it’s
hard for me to appreciate why anyone would make a fuss about it. If you’re going to make a fuss, though, just
leave now and remember that this is the warped and twisted blog where they talk
about vile animals having disgusting relations.
Emile the Rooster - Normal and Mundane |
Still there? Good. Here are two pertinent facts before we
get to the heart of the discussion:
Fact number one: Hens
do NOT need to have sex in order to lay eggs. I recently mentioned this to an acquaintance
and it blew him away. It’s like I had
ripped away an important truth that he had held his entire life. Over the next several days he kept bringing it
up, “My God! Hens don’t need a rooster
to lay eggs!” But no. No, they
don’t. As with every other animal, sex
is not required for chickens to ovulate. Of course, without a rooster, those eggs are
all sterile and will never become baby chicks – but I’m getting ahead of
myself.
Fact number two: Roosters do not have penises. Now you are blown away, right? This is so ironic considering the other
English word for rooster. And it’s not
like male birds of all species are missing that particular appendage. Ducks, for instance, have corkscrew-shaped
penises that can be nearly ten inches long – nearly half their body length. If for the sake of scientific knowledge, you
would like more fascinating information on duck penises, you can go to Dutch
ornithologist Kees Moeliker’s TED talk on homosexual necrophilia in ducks. Go there now! But don’t expect anything further on that
subject on this blog post, because I promised there would be no poultry porn!
So Emile saunters up to Arlene and does this cute little courtship dance that I call the “Emile Shuffle.” Arlene responds by thinking, “Oh no! Emile wants sex again!” and tries to run away. But Emile has cleverly planned his choreography so he’s shuffling around Arlene’s backside just as she starts to run. So he agilely hops on her back and then quickly digs in with his spurs to stay on – the term poultry people use for this is “treading”, and it is a good descriptive term. He also grabs feathers at the back of her neck with his beak to maintain his balance. She goes into a position that poultry people call “the squat”, which is also a good descriptive term. Then they do the deed for a few seconds and then he hops off and struts off while Arlene ruffles her feathers and shakes and then wanders away mumbling about how she’s lost even more neck feathers thanks to Emile and his urges. And that’s it – no post-encounter pillow talk or lying around in each other’s wings.
“OK,” you ask while averting your
eyes, “But how does ‘the deed’ even work?
You just said that roosters don’t have penises.” “Oh!”
I reply, “You mean the cloacal kiss!”
“Noooo!” you protest, “You said there wouldn’t be any poultry porn!” But, no.
Really. The rooster rubs his cloacal opening against the hen’s and sperm
passes from his cloaca to hers. Poultry
people refer to that process as the cloacal kiss – again, a good descriptive
term. The sperm travel up the hen’s
oviduct where they remain viable for at least a week and can fertilize the eggs
that pass through – usually about one egg a day.
Meanwhile, the rooster struts
around the chicken run where he can mate over fifty more times in any given
day. And the hen, if she is broody and
if she is allowed to keep her eggs, will lay a clutch of eggs, sit on them for
twenty-one days, and then they’ll hatch and she’ll have a little peeping
family!
If you eat eggs from a flock of
hens that live with a rooster, you more than likely are eating fertilized
eggs. How can you tell the
difference? If you look closely at the yolk of an
unfertilized egg you can see a small speck on it – that’s the blastodisc. If you look at a fertilized egg you’ll see a
slightly larger speck – that’s the (fertilized) blastoderm, and that’s the only
difference. There is no likelihood of
cracking open and egg and finding a baby chick – chicks don’t form unless the
egg is incubated either in a mechanical incubator or under a broody hen, and
farmers routinely collect eggs at least daily and usually several times a day. Eggs kept at room temperature or refrigerator
temperature will not develop. So stop worrying about that!
Is there any way to tell the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs without cracking them open? Once an egg has incubated for a few days, you can candle it. Candling is simply a process of holding the eggs up to a light. Fertile, developing eggs will become more opaque. Can hens tell the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs? Well, my broody hens are more than happy to sit on golf balls. So I think the answer to that question is a definitive “no”.
Is there any way to tell the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs without cracking them open? Once an egg has incubated for a few days, you can candle it. Candling is simply a process of holding the eggs up to a light. Fertile, developing eggs will become more opaque. Can hens tell the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs? Well, my broody hens are more than happy to sit on golf balls. So I think the answer to that question is a definitive “no”.
And that’s it. Any questions? I thought not.
Love your chicken writings, as would have Mark! You are just as dry as I remember, but I didn't know that you were such a great storyteller!! Keep it coming!!
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