Raising Chickens For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2

Basic Chicken Biology and Behavior

IN THIS CHAPTER

Checking out basic chicken anatomy

Determining whether a chicken is healthy

Getting a glimpse of how chickens behave

Seeing how chickens interact with other animals

Most people can identify a chicken even if they’ve never owned one. A few chicken breeds may fool some folks, but by and large, people know what a chicken looks like. However, if you’re going to keep chickens, you need to know more than that. To select and raise healthy birds, which involves understanding breed variations, identifying and treating illness, and talking about your chickens (particularly when seeking healthcare advice or discussing breeding), you need to be able to identify a chicken’s various parts. In the first part of this chapter, we cover basic chicken biology.

When raising chickens, you also need to know how to tell whether a chicken is healthy, so we describe what a healthy bird looks like. Last but not least, to adequately care for and interact with birds, you need to know a bit about their daily routines — how they eat, sleep, and socialize ...