It just seems like the math doesn’t add up. Like I eat a healthy diet and I get tired just pooping out the bad stuff, meanwhile a chicken can eat non stop corn and have enough “good” stuff left over to create and throw away an egg the size of their head, every day.
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Back yard chicken owner here.
They just hang out and eat all day. If they free range, they literally just walk around and eat bugs all day. Coop is cool in summer and warm in winter. All their resources go towards the egg. And I spend $35 every couple weeks on a huge bag of formulated pellets that are packed with protein and nutrients to make sure they have the resources.
But they slow down and stop laying as soon as they need resources. If it’s really, really hot they’ll slow down. In the fall, they molt when the days start getting shorter. All their feathers drop and they look like they’re dying and they lay 1 egg a week instead of 1 egg a day. Then they stop all winter and basically just huddle up and chill. In the spring they’ll start laying again.
They also slow when older and then stop. My 5 chickens went from 3 dozen a week last year to 2 dozen a week this year. I suspect next year will be about a dozen and a half a week.
I have one who is probably 5 years old. She’s just a pet chicken at this point. Pops out a tiny egg every few weeks. Like the size of a gumball.
Because bamboo flowering cycles can be decades apart.
Wait, wait, hear me out!
Chickens are a tropical bird, originally from south-east asia. In that area, bamboo forests are common. Unlike most plants, bamboo has this odd habit that it flowers (and drops fruits) very infrequently. Some species only flower every 150 years! When they do, they literally carpet the forest floor with fruit. It’s a short-lived, infrequent calorie bonanza.
Normal animals wouldn’t be able to take much advantage of this. Eating more has its limits, it won’t let them suddenly multiply to huge numbers. In Africa, locusts can and do take advantage of calorie surpluses. In asia, it is chickens. When there is a sudden calorie surplus, they lay lots of eggs, literally daily. Their chicks grow up fast, and feed themselves. When the forest floor is covered with bamboo fruit, chickens explode in numbers and can outcompete other animals.
Combine this with the inability of chickens to fly very far, and that they’re omnivores makes them the perfect bird for domestication. They’ll eat anything, and as long as they’re fed a calorie surplus they’ll lay large eggs daily! Most birds will only lay eggs once or at most two or three times per year.
Chickens convert “garbage” or other low-quality calorie sources into a high-quality package of protein and fats that stores really well. You can keep eggs in the kitchen for at least a couple of weeks without refrigeration!
Not to mention that chickens like to eat the kind of bugs that are pests in vegetable gardens, but generally won’t eat the vegetables themselves. Many other egg-laying birds will preferentially eat the vegetables and leave the bugs.
Of course, then you can also eat the chicken itself if they’re too old to lay eggs.
This ticks a lot of checkboxes, more than any other organism on the planet. They’re fast-breading, easily domesticatable omnivores, pest control, packaged food manufacturers, that you can also eat.
This is why we eat chicken eggs instead of, say, duck eggs.
We have a flock of 30+ chickens that free range and have access to feed. My wife sells the surplus eggs and every last customer raves about the difference between store bought and farm fresh. Raising chickens for eggs is a losing proposition though financially.
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