Taylor Made Poultry Advantage Card

Start saving with our Advantage card .

As a member you will benefit from the following!

  • Up to 10% discount on selected lines, (This includes food, treats, feeders/ drinkers, treatments, housing and any hens.)*
  •  10% off hen boarding
  • E-mail updates and tips
  • 2 week guarantee against health problems* on P.O.L hensAsk in store for more details or to sign up

Taylor Made Poultry, Countryman’s Choice, Cadleigh Park, Ivybridge, PL21 9JL

Tel: 01752 426422
info@taylormadepoultry.co.uk
www.taylormadepoultry.co.uk

* T & Cs apply, please ask

How to tell if an egg is fresh?

Place the egg into a bowl of cold water.
The water level should be deeper than the egg’s length.
Observe what the egg does.
Fresh eggs will sink to the bottom of the bowl and lie on their sides.
Slightly older eggs (about one week) will lie on the bottom but bob slightly.
If the egg balances on its smallest end, with the large end reaching for the sky, it’s probably around three weeks old.
Please keep in mind that this can change depending on temperature stored and refrigeration.
Eggs can be kept for over a month outside and over 3 months refrigerated.

What gives my egg its colour?

Colour of the yolk:
Yolk colour is dependent on the diet of the hen; if the diet contains yellow/orange plant pigments known as xanthophylls, then they are deposited in the yolk, colouring it. A colourless diet can produce an almost colourless yolk. Farmers may enhance yolk colour with artificial pigments, or with natural supplements rich in lutein (marigold extracts are a popular choice).
Colour of the shell:
Egg shell colour is caused by pigment deposition during egg formation in the oviduct and can vary according to species and breed, from the more common white or brown to pink or speckled blue-green.
In general, chicken breeds with white ear lobes lay white eggs, whereas chickens with red ear lobes lay brown eggs.
Although there is no significant link between shell colour and nutritional value, there is often a cultural preference for one colour over another. For example, in most regions of the United States, chicken eggs are generally white; while in the northeast of that country, and in countries as diverse as Costa Rica, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, they are generally light-brown. In Brazil and Poland, white chicken eggs are generally regarded as industrial, and brown or reddish ones are preferred.

Chicken Facts 1

 There are at least two hundred breeds and variations of domestic chickens on record, most though are extinct or rare.
•There are more chickens on earth than there are people, over three billion in china alone.
•The red Jungle fowl Gallus gallus is generally believed to be the    ancestor of the modern domesticated chicken.
• Recent evidence suggests that domestication of the chicken began in  Vietnam over 10,000 years ago.
•Chickens are the closest living relative of the tyrannosaur.
 •If you have a fear of chickens you may be Alektorophobic.
•A chickens’ heart beats at an amazing 280-315 beats a minute.
•Chickens enjoy dust bathing and become frustrated if they are prevented from doing so, such as in the close confinement          of factory farmed battery hens.
•In their natural environment Chickens are fastidiously clean and preen their feathers everyday
•Chickens are omnivores, this means they eat both vegetables and meat.   In the wild, chickens eat grain, seeds, fruit, other vegetation, and insects, they often scratch at the soil to search for seeds and insects. Chickens like girt in their diet, which helps them to digest their food.
•In the wild Chickens may live for five to eleven years however  in the confinement of intensive farming, a meat chicken, called a broiler, generally lives only six weeks before slaughter
•Some breeds of chickens can lay coloured eggs:  Ameraucana and Araucana can lay eggs colored in shades of green or blue, depending on the breed.
•In their natural environment Chickens live together as a flock. They have a communal approach to the incubation of eggs and raising of young.
•Chickens have been depicted on postage stamps such as this one from the Faroe Islands issued 2007.

Chickens in Culture

 

•Chickens are good mothers In Ancient Rome  the term “You were raised by a hen”, was considered a compliment. As is a similar expression  “Mother hen”, which implies a chicken is a good mother as is the reference in the bible in Matthew 23:37  “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” This is a metaphor eluding to the protective nature of a mother hen who reaches out to gather her chicks under her wings to shelter them and keep them safe.
•Chickens like most animals feature in religious belief and mythology. There is a delightful belief in Islam that when a cock crows it is because he has seen an angel.  In the Hadith, Muhammad commands, “When you hear the crowing of cocks, ask for Allah’s Blessings for they have seen an angel.
•The chicken has a great significance during the Hindu cremation ceremony in Indonesia. A chicken is tethered by his or her leg during the duration of the ceremony so that any evil sprits may be channelled into the chicken rather than the family members who are present. After this ceremony the chicken is returned home and is not treated any differently.
•The cock has become a symbol of both vigilance and betrayal due to the account in the bible where Jesus prophesied Peter’s betrayal ‘I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.'”(Luke 22:34)
•In the cult of Mithras, the cock was a symbol of the divine light and a guardian against evil.
•The rooster is a real gentleman so to speak and when he finds something good to eat he often calls his hens to eat first. This considerate behaviour may be the reason the Talmud (Judaism) speaks of learning “courtesy toward one’s mate” from the rooster.
•In many Central European folk tales, the devil is believed to flee at the first crowing of a cock.
•The Rooster or Cock is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The most recent year of the rooster occurred between February 9th 2005 to January 28th 2006. the next year of the rooster is 2017. Those born in the year of the rooster are said to be sociable, shrewd ,very accomplished, outspoken, boastful, courageous, practical but also dreamers, to name just a few of the personality traits which roosters are said to possess.

Chicken Facts 2

  • Chickens are the subject of the 2002 popular film Chicken Run which is the hilarious story of a group of Chickens who escape from their coop before their own makes them into Chicken pies!
  • Chickens are able to communicate with their mother whilst still in the egg and she with them. They can hear their mother’s vocalisations and understand them after they are born.
  • In 2007, researches were able to extract small amounts of collagen protein from a 68 million year old Tyrannosaourses Rex leg bone. Futher analysis confirmed that the chicken is the closed living relative to the T.Rex
  • A Chicken can run about 9 miles per hour a human can usually manage 12- 15 mile per hour
  • The world record for the most eggs laid in one day is seven
  • The record for multiple egg yolks in one egg is nine
  • Chicken language has real meanings. The birds give different alarm calls depending on which type of predator is threatening them.
  • Chickens can cross breed with turkeys. The result is called a ‘Turkin’
  • Chickens experience REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. (I wonder what they dream about?)
  • There are seven distinctive types of combs on chickens: rose, strawberry, single, cushion, buttercup, pea, and V-shaped.

Chick Chick Chick Chicken trivia

  • You can literally hypnotize a chicken by holding it and drawing a line in the dirt over and over. The chicken will stay still right there as long as you do this.
  • Colonel Sanders (the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy in the white suit) was the second most recognized public figure in the world in 1979.
  • Did you know that some breeds of chickens can lay coloured eggs? Sure enough, the Ameraucana and Araucana can lay eggs coloured in shades of green or blue, depending on the breed and it’s ancestry.
  • In Fruita, Colorado, the town folk celebrate “Mike the Headless Chicken Day””. Seems that a farmer named L.A. Olsen cut off Mike’s head on September 10, 1945 in anticipation of a chicken dinner – and Mike lived for another 4 years WITHOUT A HEAD. Mike died from choking on a corn kernel.
  • In Gainesville, Georgia – the chicken capital of the world – it is illegal to eat chicken with a fork!
  • One punishment for an adulterous wife in medieval France was to make her chase a chicken through town naked. The source doesn””t state whether it was the chicken or the wife who was naked.
  • According to National Geographic, scientists have settled the old dispute over which came first — the chicken or the egg. They say that reptiles were laying eggs thousands of years before chickens appeared, and the first chicken came from an egg laid by a bird that was not quite a chicken. That seems to answer the question. The egg came first.
  • Beijing boasts the world””s largest Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
  • Chimney””s used to be cleaned by dropping live chickens down them
  • The closest living relative of the t-rex is the chicken which makes the phobia ””Alektorophobia”” (Fear of chickens) slightly more plausible.

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www.chickenstoyourdoor.co.uk