Chicken Life Cycle: Amaze-wing Facts From Egg To Adult Chick Explained

On average, a chicken has four stages in its lifecycle.

A chicken lives for three to five years, except for some breeds which are known to live longer, and have four distinct life phases: egg, chick, pullet, and chicken stage. In each of these stages, a chicken will have differing needs to ensure they continue to develop healthily throughout their lifetime. there is no proper answer to the age-old question of whether the egg came first or the chicken came first.

Mother hen needs to mate with a rooster in order to produce chickens. The chicken life cycle, from being a chick that came out of the eggshell to the adult chickens, is a very short period of time. Also, the hen is only fertile for one to two years to lay chickens. The baby chicks feed on egg white for the nutrients when they hatch. Egg-laying hens form the eggshells using calcium from its body.

The chicken life cycle is no different from other oviparous animals (egg-laying animals). The mother hen needs to eat at least 0.25 lb (113.4 g) daily as it is for both chick and mother. The young chickens are very energetic and hence have a constant need for food. Developing more in the life cycle, the chickens will have different needs week after week. It's a myth that chicks can grow at a faster pace if they hatch in a well-incubated environment. Hatching is a completely natural process and nothing additional can alter the life cycle of a chicken in any way. After giving birth to some chickens, the mother hen takes some time to relax and shed her feathers, meanwhile, the chicks grow after hatching from the eggshell. Mothers usually do that in the fall for a few weeks.

Do you like chickens and are interested to know more about these creatures? Now here you can also read articles on chicken facts and chicken wattle on Kidadl.

What is the life cycle of a chicken?

We all must have eaten a chicken or egg in our life but how much do we know about them? How much do we know about the healthy chicken we eat or a healthy egg we eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, here is an analysis of how chicken comes to our tables.

Every 23-25 hours, a hen will begin laying eggs, and this is a typical cycle. Unless a rooster fertilizes the hen and an embryo is created, the eggs remain unfertilized. The hen may retain the rooster's sperm for up to three weeks. When a rooster fertilizes a hen, the mother hen begins collecting eggs for incubation and sits on those eggs for 21 days. During this stage, the mother hen will turn the eggs on a regular basis, to keep them warm, and remove those eggs that are not showing good signs of development. On day 21, baby chicks will emerge from the eggshell in a pretty wet state. As the chick absorbs all of the nutrients which they get from the egg white into their bodies for sustenance, which can maintain newborn chicks for 23-70 hours, they will become dry and fluffy.

Now that baby chicks are born, they will remain under the wings of a mother hen so that the chicks can feel the warmth and be safe and the hen will attend to all the needs and the care baby chick want. Fresh water and food with lots of proteins at room temperature are required for the new baby chick and hen, and if incubating you need to have water and food containing protein for the chicks. Warm temperature is important for the development of baby chicks and the heat lamp should be at 95 ℉ (35 ℃), the same as the temperature of chicks. Reduce the temperature by five degrees every week until chicks become adept at room temperature.

As the baby chicks grow, they soon develop real feathers by the second week. You see them developing more feathers and rapid development. And on reaching week five, the temperature should be equal to the air temperature at 65-70℉ (18.33-21.11 ℃), by now the baby chick is fully feathered and can control their own temperature by their feathers. This is also the time to defend the chicks from predators. By week eight the chicks start to eat greens, grains, mealworms, and corn and are on the way to becoming pullets and cockerels.

Adolescence is not the happiest time in a chick's life as they are all skinny. Just like the human kids begin the life of a teenager, the chicks begin to do the same in their life cycle and try to integrate with adults who are well fed and more powerful than pullets and a brutal war blows in the place, but it will turn out to be okay if you separate them from adults. The cockerels start to lay eggs around this time and the eggs are not of the same quality as a normal hen produces and are called 'pullet eggs'. This is because the first egg a cockerel produces is small. They spend their adolescent life learning from adults they see around them doing various kinds of day-to-day activities.

Every year hens molt, they replace old, worn-out feathers to have new feathers, but the new hens would keep laying throughout the winter so the supply of eggs is not hindered. After two months, the chicks may themselves become brooders and produce fertile eggs in their nest to incubate and the cycle goes on like this.

How long do chickens live and lay eggs?

Constant production of eggs by hens is the sign of healthy hens. Hens usually lay the first egg when they are 18 weeks old. During the first year, the egg production can reach up to 250 eggs in the most fertile and high-producing chickens. But this does not go on, the productivity decreases each year and the egg count becomes less after three years as the hens entered the age of retirement. On a commercial level hens lay eggs every 22 hours and their productivity is around for two years or less.

The backyard chickens which are fed well have the capacity to lay at most 250 eggs a year. These chickens take at least 24 hours to make an egg and in hens, this process takes place naturally every year. The best breeds in chickens to lay eggs are the blue Andalusians (white eggs), Ameraucanas (blue eggs), white leghorn hybrids (white eggs), Rhode Island reds (brown eggs), and Plymouth barred rocks (brown eggs).

If you control housing, breeding, management, weather, parasite load, nutrition, and medical attention, a hen can produce one egg per day, and 80-90% are considered good. It all depends on the conditions hens live in and most hens naturally get slow down during the winter and fall if they won't get the light for at least 16 hours inside their sheds. And hence, conditions play a vital part in the production of eggs. A chicken lives for approximately five years, but the hens are only able to be productive enough to lay eggs during the initial two years, sometimes even three years in their life. At a commercial level, hens are productive for the max of two years and can be even less sometimes. At their maximum productivity, the hens can even lay eggs for one in 22 hours.

How is a butterfly's life cycle different than a chicken's?

They both are two different topics, however, some similarities do exist. Different classes of animals have different life cycles. Most classes of animals, including mammals, fish, birds, and reptiles, and have fairly simple life cycles.

After hatching, they grow and develop into adults. Insects and Amphibians have more complicated life cycles. They undergo metamorphosis, a significant change in their physical structure or habits because of this. The two main types of metamorphosis are incomplete and complete. In incomplete metamorphosis, the offspring actually resemble the adult e.g. the nymph of grasshopper looks like an adult grasshopper, it just lacks wings. In complete metamorphosis, the offspring do not resemble the adults, such as in the case of a butterfly and a caterpillar.

They have similarities in how they both lay eggs and have wings, and unlike a chicken, a caterpillar will emerge from a butterfly egg and go through its stages of development to become another butterfly whereas a chicken goes through first with embryo then becomes an egg and then become adult chickens and then a rooster or hen. Their evolution is 'homologous' and wings are the physical similarity in both of them. A butterfly or a moth has four stages in its life cycle: egg, larva, pupa, and adult.

A chicken will live for three to five years on average (although some breeds are known to live much longer) and will go through three separate life stages: egg, chick, and chicken. A chicken will have different needs at different stages of its life cycle to promote healthy development. They both lay eggs and have wings. A chicken will live for three to five years on average. Some breeds are known to live long and have four distinct life phases: egg, chick, pullet, and chicken stage. A butterfly is environment friendly as they are a natural pest controller and affects pollination. They are an important element of the food chain for bats, birds, and other animals.

How many stages do chickens have in their lifecycle?

Below are the four phases which are there in the chicken life cycle. Chickens hatch and grow very fast

Stage 1- Embryo. The phase of the embryo gets started at the very moment when a hen produces the egg to get fertilized, an embryo is formed and in 21 days chicks are out of the egg's shell. The yolk part of the egg is what turns into chickens.

Stage 2 - Chick. The phase for the chick gets started after 20 days, on day 21 when an egg hatches. The time period of this phase is not fixed for every breed, this completely depends on a particular chicken breed.

Stage 3 - Pullet. People sometimes forget to mention the stage of pullet when they think about the development of chicken. In another way, you can say that these chickens develop in the same way we humans do, and hence they also have a teenage period in their development cycle.

Stage 4 - Adult. The mature chicken may live for up to seven years. The lifespan of an adult chicken is determined by the breed as well as the care it receives.

What is the final stage of the chicken life cycle?

The adult chicken's phase of life can last up to seven years. The lifespan of an adult chicken depends on the breed and also on husbandry. Egg-laying hens form the eggshells using calcium from their bodies.

When hens grow older, they also start showing many signs of aging. Having a wrinkled face, dull and heavy eyes, increased rear size, and less energy throughout the day are the signs of old age in the chicken. Even in this condition, they try to remain those delightful animals they were in their youth.

When the chickens start to age, just like most creatures do, these chickens will start then display the signs of old age. Due to their old age, the egg production gets very decreased, sometimes almost on the egg for an entire year. Mostly, the female hens do not lay any more eggs when they reach this stage of their life.

Did you know? Chickens are said to have evolved from the Theropod group of dinosaurs.

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