FACTORALY - E63 CHICKENS

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Simon lays it on the line. Bruce pecks away at the facts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

hello simon hello bruce fancy meeting you here i know just bumping into each other in these strange places. In small cupboards. Yes, padded rooms. Indeed, yes. Before our dear listeners think anything particularly bad about us or that we're being sinister, Bruce and I are professional voiceover artists. We are. Which is why we spend a lot of our time hanging around in padded booths. And we talk like this occasionally.

Yes, but only when we're doing serious pieces. Yes, I know. So welcome to this episode of a podcast. Indeed. You receive it orally. We send it orally. And it's all about facts. Yes. Which is why it's called Factorily. Makes sense, doesn't it? logic good we like logic seems reasonable uh we are both fact loving nerds we we often find ourselves down the pub going oh did you know or i think you'll find or actually etc etc etc the answer to question three is... Yes, we like a good pub quiz. And so here we are, once a week, in your ear holes, giving you lots of interesting facts about random topics. Absolutely. So what are we talking about this week, Simon? This week, Bruce, we're talking about chickens. Chickens, eh? Chickens, yes. Well, are we going to be talking about

recipes, do you think? Quite possibly. There are different elements here, aren't there? There's chickens, the animal. There's chicken, the food. I expect eggs will come into play at some point or other. All sorts of things. But let's start with the animal itself. Let's start with the living, breathing thing that has not yet been turned into something delicious. Have you found the origin of chickens?

Do you know where they come from? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Oh, my goodness. That's a big, big philosophical question to start this episode with, isn't it? Nope. Oh, isn't it? No, it's very simple. Oh, okay.

You've worked it out, have you? You've cracked it, so to speak. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it depends on how you phrase the question. Is it which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg came first because there were eggs before chickens. Right. Dinosaurs laid eggs. Fish laid eggs.

So there were always eggs. Yes. If you were specifically being asked which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg. Exactly. That might be something different. So that would still be the egg right because um there would be two creatures that would have mated and made a chicken but that chicken would have hatched from an egg yes okay but the two creatures that mated would have been kind of like almost but not quite chickens yes okay so somewhere down the evolutionary chain these these two chicken-like creatures made an egg,

and out of the egg came something which is more definitely a chicken. Yes. Oh, well, that's sorted then, isn't it? Although having said that, chickens are very closely related to Tyrannosaurus rex. Yes, they are. They're sort of like the oldest living descendants of dinosaurs

yeah except chickens don't generally try and sort of get at you when you're on the toilet no generally not that depends on the chicken i suppose um i i remember the first time i came across this this idea that um that dinosaurs you know could have evolved into bird-like creatures yes obviously being in jurassic park when i i watched that it was a brand new philosophy as far as i knew um there's a particular dinosaur in jurassic park called gallimimus which is a small bird-sized dinosaur that sort of runs around and gets under your feet yes and um i had a look around the name of this thing uh the latin for a domestic chicken is gallus gallus domesticus okay um and and the gallus bit means chicken

so this this little dinosaur called the gallimimus the mimus meaning to mime or pretend so this little dinosaur is is essentially called the pretend chicken fair enough isn't that great so chicken chickens originally were not chickens they were they were a thing called a red jungle fowl isn't that a great name jungle fowl red jungle fowl which if you look at a picture of the red jungle fowl looks like a chicken yeah it does yeah it's a it's this this sort of prototype creature which all domesticated breeds of chicken seem to have sprung from um the red jungle fowl also known as the indian jungle fowl by nature of its name comes from india and surrounding areas and um it was around 8,000 years ago in those areas that people first started domesticating the red jungle fowl,

which eventually became the chicken. Aha. What else do we know about chickens? They have lots of different names, depending on their gender and their age and their purpose. Rocky? Not that kind of name, I wasn't thinking, but sure. I mean, Rocky's a very famous chicken chicken but we'll come to rocky later we will i'm sure we will so a male chicken is called a rooster

when it's sexually mature before it's sexually mature it's called a cockerel a female chicken is called a hen before it reaches sexual maturity it's called a pullet which comes from the french poulet which is french for chicken baby chickens regardless of age gender etc are all called chicks the word chicken originally was an old english term kicken which specifically meant the young of a domestic hen so it was sort of the forerunner of the word chick. And then over the years, Kikkin just became the bird as a whole. Aha.

They're quite interesting animals, chickens. They're okay, aren't they? They're not bad. They can fly short distances. Yeah, yeah. They can't sort of fly a lot. No, they're not particularly graceful looking birds, are they? No, no, they're really not graceful at all. They can also dream.

Can they? Yeah, it's quite interesting. They can sort of dream with one half of their brain. Okay, that's very precise. They do get REM, you know, rapid eye movement when they sleep, which means that they're dreaming. Right. But they also have a sleep phase which is called unihemispheric slow wave sleep.

Ooh. So what happens is one half of the brain's asleep and the other half's awake, which means that chickens can sleep with one eye open. Wow. And that's useful, you know, if there's some sort of fox coming into the coop. Yeah, okay. You can keep an eye open for predators. How interesting. The other thing about their eyesight is that they can see better than dogs and things.

Can they? Yeah. So they're like humans. They can see red, green, and blue light, but they can also see ultraviolet. Oh, okay. So, you know, they go crazy in discos. That's brilliant. They're good little talkers they have 30 unique vocalizations not just cluck not just like there's mating calls stress calls danger calls how they're feeling and oh look there's there's some grain there's there's

like quite a few different ways that they can communicate with each other oh i've heard that they they are quite intelligent. They seem to be more intelligent than we sometimes give them credit for, perhaps. Yes. Well, I mean, we don't take earth baths, do we, really? I tend not to. I don't know about you or any of our listeners, but I tend not to. But then I don't have an oily substance that gets into my feathers that I have to wash off.

No, me neither. So when you see chickens dust bathing, they're basically just getting the oil off their feathers. When they're chicks, they can talk to each other in their shells. No, they can't. Yes, they can. Really? Yeah. They kind of agree to hatch at the same time. So there's little like ticking noises that you can hear if you get really close up to an egg with a chicken in it.

They're actually communicating with each other saying, I think it's about time that we hatched. Wow. I'm just picturing this sort of synchronized hatching event. Right. Come on, lads. It's almost time. Yeah. All ready for the off. Absolutely. Brilliant. And they lay eggs. Yeah, I've heard that. That's one of their key features. They lay different coloured eggs as well.

They do. I hadn't realised this, that the colour of the egg is dependent on the colour of the chicken. No, it's not. Oh, isn't it? No. I read absolutely categorically 100% that it was. I read that white chickens lay white eggs

and brown chickens lay brown eggs. Nope. Okay, come on then. It's not the feather colour that tells you what colour the eggs will be. It's the colour of the hen's earlobes. I wouldn't even have thought that chickens had earlobes. They do.

Hens with red earlobes usually lay brown eggs. And hens with white earlobes lay white eggs. And if you cross a hen with red earlobes with a hen with white earlobes, you sometimes get a variation of colours. You get blue eggs and things like that. Oh, I see. Well, there's a thing. But apparently there's no there's no difference

in the taste or the nutritional value between white eggs or brown eggs it just happens it seems to me just from sort of pop culture and that sort of thing it seems to me that white eggs seem to be more prevalent in america yes brown eggs seem to be more prevalent here in the uk yeah they also um they're not fussy uh generally i mean when a chicken and a turkey mate they produce a thing called a turcan from the egg dad well hey hey hang on what a chicken mating with a turkey yeah produces a turcan a turcan what does that look like bruce uh i'll put a picture in the show notes on factorily.com factorily.com yes that's the place to go when you've got say three or four hours to kill yes an absolute minefield a veritable repository of interesting facts you find out stuff like you know um if you've got a chimney full of soot the easiest way to clean it is to drop a live chicken down it

and because they flap about right they sweep chimneys on the way down i can imagine that being very effective possibly not so good for the chicken in question no no i can i can picture that yeah just a big feather dusteruster flapping around in your chimney. I heard also that if you were unfaithful as a wife in France, one of the punishments was to chase a chicken through town naked. Why? I don't know their French. I mean, I was expecting you to say to be tarred and feathered,

but to chase a chicken. I know. expecting you to say to be tarred and feathered but no to chase a chicken i know although i have i have seen um sylvester stallone chase a chicken did he have you never seen rocky not all of it i've seen it in bits i've never sat through the whole thing oh well yeah okay so now we're getting back to rocky again right except rocky wasn't um sylvester stallone rocky was mel gibson okay this is just going all sorts of crazy what's going on here have you never seen chicken run oh that rocky i was wondering where we were going with this i mean ginger and rocky great love story yeah absolutely in fact they were named after um two of um Nick Park's childhood pet chickens.

Oh, really, were they? Yeah. Oh, that's great. That film's quite interesting, actually, because it was so popular, people got really upset that it couldn't be, that it was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. But it didn't get the nomination because it's an animated feature. Oh, I see. So the very next year, they introduced an Oscar for the best animated feature.

Oh, perfect. In 2002. And that one was won by Shrek. Right. So Shrek won an Oscar because of Chicken Run. Thanks to Chicken Run. Brilliant. What a great little fact.

I know. If you're a big film fan, there's a load of references in Chicken Run to other films. There's quite a lot of references to Great Escape and things like that, aren't there? Exactly. Exactly. Speaking of animated popular culture chickens, I was having a think about Foghorn Leghorn. Oh, yes.

And one of his quotes was I'm no chicken, I'm a rooster Which knowing that a rooster is just a male chicken That doesn't actually make sense If he'd said I'm not a hen, I'm a rooster That would have been okay Absolutely But I'm no chicken, I'm a rooster

Doesn't make sense Yeah, famously played by Mel Blanc Indeed Who played an awful lot of characters An awful lot of other characters We're voiceovers, we love Mel Blanc Yes we do He was an awful lot of characters. An awful lot of other characters. We're voiceovers. We love Mel Blanc. Yes, we do.

He was also played by a chap called Frank Gorshin. Okay. Who you probably don't know played the Riddler in the TV series of Batman. Oh, yes.

I recognise him. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Brilliant. Come on, what a career move. I know. There have been other animated chickens as well.

Do you remember Alan O'Dale? Oh, in Disney's Robin Hood. In Robin Hood. Yeah. Chicken. That was one of my favourite movies of all time, actually. Gonzo was in love with a chicken. Do you remember Camilla the Chicken on the Muppets? Of course, yeah. Yeah, there were always chickens on the Muppets, weren't there? Yeah.

Little squeaky rubber ones and all sorts you mentioned the color of chicken's earlobes yes earlier on which i still find fascinating because it never occurs to me they had earlobes but one part of chicken anatomy that i had a quick look around was um combs and wattles oh the comb being the red flappy bit that looks like a rubber glove sitting atop a chicken's head. And a wattle being the dangly tonsily looking thing that hangs from a chicken's neck. And according to the British Hen Welfare Trust, there are eight distinct types of comb on a chicken. They come in different shapes and sizes these types are single pea strawberry cushion walnut buttercup v-shaped and rose

none of them actually look like any of those names but that's apparently what they're called i'll put a link up on the website so you can go and have a look at a chart of different shaped chicken combs. Lucky you. What a thing to do with your afternoon. And both these things are, essentially they're classed as organs, like the heart and the liver and the kidneys.

Yes. They have blood pumped to them. They have several functions, but one of the main functions they have is to regulate the chicken's body temperature so these these little red sacks um have blood pumped to them when it's hot to drain the blood away from the rest of the chicken to keep it cool or drained from it and pumped around the chicken uh when it's cold to keep it warm okay um they are an indicator of good health you know you can you can look at a chicken's comb or wattle see what color it is how big it is whether it's dry

or fleshy or whatever right and that'll tell you the how how good a nick the chicken is in um yes and it also acts as um a sexual attraction to chickens of the opposite sex. Well, talking of sexy chickens or sexy chickens, there's a very lucrative job called a chicken sexer. Oh, is there? Because when eggs hatch, you don't want to be feeding up a rooster when what you actually want is eggs. So you want a hen. Yeah. So the Japanese became very very good

at sexing chicks right and um they have gone around the world basically training people up to sex to identify whether it's a yeah they could they could they can distinguish between that it's so difficult to tell the difference between a male and a female chicken right i suppose in the early days at least yeah but yeah they're adults you can tell them a mile apart but yes so a chicken sexer can set well a good one can do um about a thousand chicks an hour no way that's one every three seconds with 98 accuracy and if they take it if they take a bit longer they can can do it with 100% accuracy. Good grief. Yeah.

What are the telltale signs then? What are they looking for? Well, if I knew I could earn a fortune as a chicken sexer, there are differences. But often it's about, if you're experienced chicken sexer, it's just about the way they, you get a feeling about it.

Right. So you can't count them before they're hatched, but you can certainly count them after they've been hatched. it's chicken sex it's just about the way they you get a feeling about it right so you so you can't count them before they're hatched but you can certainly count them after they've been hatched so long as you haven't already put them all in the same basket well exactly we use the word chicken quite a lot don don't we? In various different idioms. Yes, I suppose so. It's used to denote cowardice, isn't it? Well, yes.

Yeah, it's like, and there's things like no spring chicken. Yes, sure. And people being henpecked. Yes. Running around like a headless chicken. All that sort of stuff. Being paid chicken feed. Ah.

Clucking around like a mother hen. Yes. And then, of course, there's the cowardice. Yeah. You chicken. As famously used in Back to the Future. Nobody calls me chicken. Yes. Brilliant. There is an aspect of chicken which I suppose we do have to tackle. Yeah. Which is that they are delicious. Yes. This is, it's an interesting one, isn't it? We did an episode on fish and I felt no qualms whatsoever in talking about eating fish.

It comes to chicken and all of a sudden I feel a little bit hesitant to talk about it. Maybe it's because there is a tendency to not treat them terribly well well yes although some of the big boys are trying to improve the they're giving it a go aren't they yeah they're giving it a go including the the daddy of them all oh uh the colonel colonel sanders yeah yeah he's um a strange man. He once killed one of his business rivals. Did he? Yeah. So what happened was that he painted a sign directing people to a shell station, the one where he started selling his chicken, which riled up the owner of a nearby petrol station, a guy called Matt Stewart.

Right. Who promptly painted it over. And then Sanders went back and painted over that painting over and renewed it right and then they just basically just this just kind of escalated and as soon as harland sanders heard that this chap was painting over his sign again he and two mates decided to catch them in the act right and there was a gunfight which killed one of Sanders' co-workers. Oh, my goodness. And Sanders shot Stewart in the shoulder. Wow. He wasn't actually a colonel.

Oh. I know. Well, he kind of was. He was an honorary colonel. He was named an honorary colonel by the state of Kentucky in 1935. That seems an appropriate way to say thanks for all the chicken. Well, yes. I mean, when he died, the state of kentucky ordered

um flags to be lowered to half mast really yeah wow i had a look at um how much chicken is used by kfc yes specifically in this country yeah so in this country generally speaking uh we use one just over 1 billion chickens for food per year in the uk as 60 million of those go directly to kfc wow uh so in this country they use 60 million according to the kfc website they're quite open about their practices and the fact that they're trying to introduce better welfare standards and they have the red tractor farm seal of approval to sort of show that they you know they're sort of going after the the chicken's welfare i don't believe they actually use the word free range anywhere in their website but you know the implication is that they're trying their best yes um and it says on their website that all of their on-the-bone chicken comes from the UK.

Depending on seasonal demand, some of their boneless chicken, so their fillets, their burgers, their little popcorn chicken and things like that, that may come from chickens overseas if demand ever outstrips their their supply chain within the uk but they sort of try to go local and they try to increase the welfare of the chickens because i don't think they have a particularly good name when it comes to the quality and the welfare of their birds i've looked at a few different websites who had rather different opinions the lowest one one said we eat, on average, 27 kilos of chicken a year each. Right. That's quite a lot. Another one said it's more like 35 kilos. Wow.

But, you know, if we sort of incorporate into that Sunday roasts, fried chicken from the fried chicken shop, which we won't talk about anymore. No. You know, stuffing your sandwich on your barbecue. Yes. Things like that, casseroles whatever um i can imagine over the course of a year i can imagine that that would be reasonable apparently chicken is the highest consumed meat in the uk over beef lamb pork anything else we eat more chicken than we do anything i imagine it's probably the highest consumed meat in the

world i couldn't find evidence to that but it's certainly the highest consumed meat in the uk wow um and interestingly that that that trend that uh consumption has increased quite a lot back in 1950 the average person in the uk at less than one kilo of chicken a year well it was expensive so we're eating about 30 times as much as we were 70 years ago it's a bit like salmon salmon used to be a very very expensive dish and now it's ubiquitous yeah whereas and chicken was the same chicken was a very expensive like once a week as a special roast right meal whereas people now do you know make sort of it's the cheapest thing stir fries and and chicken nuggets yeah you know all sorts of stuff yeah It's sort of the opposite of oysters, isn't it? Oysters used to be the food of the common folk in East London.

Yes, exactly. They're preserved of the wealthy. Exactly. There are some chickens that don't look like chickens. Okay. Talk me through those. They're sort of like these exotic chickens these fancy chickens okay look actually look quite nice hmm there's a there's a group called

the silkies okay uh which have which are very fluffy and um they look quite downy and soft yeah and then and then of course you've got frizzle chickens of course which look frizzled uh again on in the show notes i'll put a link to a page that shows you all of these there's sarama chickens which is the smallest chicken in the world and they look those are they're kind of quite muscly okay right they're from malaysia they're also described as archangel chickens or warrior birds oh brilliant what a great name oh there's one which has got like an enormous it looks like it's got an enormous hat on yeah called a sultan chicken and you can imagine what the hat looks like if i tell you it's called a sultan chicken yes i can

i can imagine that exactly and then you've got polish chickens and the ostrelaup the what now an ostrelaup which is a which is a. Okay. It's known for being good with children. That's good to know. I know. Cochin chickens, they're large domesticated chickens. Right. They're quite pretty. And then, of course, you can keep these exotic chicks in a coop.

Sure. There is one that's based on the Palace of Versailles. Is there really? Yeah, it's $100,000. Oh my goodness, that's one heck of a chicken. It's from Neiman Marcus in America. Right, okay. It's called the Heritage Hen Mini Farm.

It has cushy rooms for nesting and roosting, and it's multi-level. It comes with a chandelier and a small library. Just in case the chickens need to read before bed. Absolutely. That's incredible. It's quite something. After all of those beautiful, illustrious names of chickens from far and wide,

I had a quick look at what what specific breeds of chickens do we get in this country and and there are globally there are several hundred breeds of chicken um the internet seems to keep repeating the phrase no one really knows how many breeds of chicken there are there are just too many to count um but in this country if we're sort of looking specifically at breeds of chickens that are bred for food and eggs, they all seem to be named after the local area. So you get Cornish chickens, Sussex chickens, the Orpington hen, the Dorking chicken. Sorry, the Orpington hen.

The Orpington hen is a breed of chicken, yeah. The Dorking chicken and the seabright chicken um i live not terribly far from dorking and uh the chicken is on the dorking coat of arms and one of the first things you see as you drive into dorking on on a roundabout on the a24 is a great big giant silver chicken in the middle of the roundabout welcoming you to dorking welcome to dorking uh it's locally known as the giant cock how interesting i will look for it on my next trip to dorking welcome to dorking uh it's locally known as the giant cock how interesting i will look for it on my next trip to dorking do it's a it's a feature it's a sight to be seen do you know why the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side, surely. That was what it said in 1847.

Right. In a monthly magazine from New York called The Knickerbocker. Okay. This is the first time this riddle appeared. And it's like, there's so many jokes based on that. It's had an awful lot of variations since then, hasn't it? I didn't realise that was the original, though. I thought, whenever I hear that,

I always thought that was sort of a modern twist that just simplifies the whole long running gag. But that was actually the original. The original was to get to the other side. Yeah. How interesting. I mean, it's one of the dullest jokes in all of humanity,

but yes, how interesting. Absolutely. So should we end on that joke? Should we do some records? Yes, let's do some records. Come on then, chicken-related records. Okay, chicken-related records. There are lots of chicken-related records.

Most of them are a bit dull. They're sort of the biggest chicken and smallest chicken, fastest chicken, fattest chicken, heaviest chicken, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A few more interesting ones, the largest serving of fried chicken, smallest chicken, fastest chicken, fattest chicken, heaviest chicken, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A few more interesting ones. The largest serving of fried chicken, the biggest chicken nugget, the furthest throw of a rubber chicken. That one I want to hear. That one you want to hear.

Yeah. This was achieved by a gentleman called Osman Gökül in Turkey on the 30th of August this year, 2024. Okay. And he managed to chuck a rubber chicken with his bare hands 35 metres. 100 feet? 114 feet 9 inches, to be precise. Was it a regulation rubber chicken?

I would really hope so. I'd like to think that Guinness kind of have a regulation rubber chicken. Well, I mean, you'd like to think it was just a stock standard squeaky rubber chicken, not fitted with extra wings or propellers or anything like that exactly so they must have some kind of standards um but there once we get past that there are quite a few interesting chicken records um this one is so incredibly precise it's just made up for this one event uh this is the most the most

identifications to be made by a chicken in one minute okay this was achieved by a lady called emily carrington and her chicken lacy right who are from british columbia in canada also this year and um this lady has taught her chicken how to identify objects so she will show an object whether it's a model or a figure or a number or a letter or a colour or something like that yeah she shows that to the chicken and then the chicken goes over to a great big pile of stuff and picks that item out of the pile. They are apparently renowned for having very good memories. Are they? They can recognise over 100 different faces.

Oh, crikey, that's good going, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, that's better than a sheep. And this chicken, Lacey, managed to make six correct identifications in one minute, which I was really disappointed with. I thought that was a little bit low. I was expecting double digits at least. Oh, right. There's the largest collection

of chicken related paraphernalia which is held by cecil and joan dixon from america obviously they have a collection of 6505 chicken related items uh which they've been collecting for over 40 years why no the longest surviving headless chicken. Oh, okay. You mentioned the phrase earlier on, running around like a headless chicken. Yes. I never looked into the origin of this.

Presumably this is a thing that, you know, if it actually amassed its own phrase, running around like a headless chicken, then headless chickens running around must be quite a thing that happens regularly. Yes. But I don't really understand why that is um but in september 1945 a chicken named mike from colorado had its head

cut off um and it continued to survive for 18 months without a head without a head and mike's owner lloyd olsen kept it alive he fed the chicken by pouring food directly into the cavity on its throat where its head used to be using an eyedropper and this chicken lived for a year and a half without a head there's a tiny little footnote at the end that says um mike the chicken eventually choked to death one night in an arizona hotel no more details that's it there is so much more to that story i'm sure yeah i'm sure um and the last uh the last record i found you know you know the birdie song sadly Sadly, I do, yes. It'll be in everybody's heads now.

You're welcome. In America, that's called the chicken dance or the chicken song. Right. And this record is for the largest number of people to take part in a public performance of the chicken dance in the US. This was in 1996. 72,000 people got together. All doing that thing with their hands. With the hands representing the beaks and they're flapping their arms like wings

and all that sort of stuff. And this was performed at the Canfield Fair in Ohio, USA in 1996. That's just not right. Well, that's all the facts that I have about chickens how about you bruce oh i know no no no that's it you're done yes i'm i'm completely plucked okay well we'll uh we'll we'll call it a day there then um now as traditionally podcasters do we have a few favors that we would like to ask you our dear dear listeners, to do for us, if you would be so kind. Give us a five-star review and tell us what you like about the show. Now.

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