A dinosaur's cousin
The chicken is one of the closest living relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex.
Garden and aviary · Time every day
Pet hen
Poultry · descended from the red junglefowl of Asia
A plump brown hen with scalloped feathers, a red comb on her head and red wattles under her beak.
- Size
- About 2 to 3kg
- Lives for
- 5 to 10 years
- Suits
- Families with a garden and a few minutes morning and evening
Struts after you, pecking as she goes. Move your pointer and see.
Good to know
Six things about the hen
An egg most days
A good laying hen produces around three hundred eggs a year.
The pecking order
Every flock has a strict order of who eats first. It is where the phrase comes from.
Dust baths
Hens roll and flap in dry earth to keep their feathers clean and free of mites.
They know faces
A hen can recognise about a hundred other chickens, and the people who feed her.
Rescue hens
Thousands of hens retired from egg farms are rehomed as pets every year.
The real thing
Photos of the hen
.jpeg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
Looking after one
Keep at least three in a fox-proof house with a run. Feed layers' pellets with grit and fresh water, collect the eggs daily, and shut them in at dusk.
Before you get one
Hens are tame, funny and useful, and good with children. They will dig up a lawn, and they must be let out and shut in every single day.
Keep going