h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My wife and I have lost countless nights of sleep trying to figure this one out. We've spent hours on the web looking for the answer, checked every biology book we could get our hands on, and asked just about every person who's not likely to just laugh in our face. So please, if anyone knows, have mercy and put us out of our misery by telling us:

How exactly do chicken eggs (and other bird eggs, for that matter) get fertilized? Does it happen before or after the chicken lays the eggs?

Thank you in advance!

Birds' eggs get fertilised before they're laid - in pretty much the 'usual way'. The shells aren't formed until a bit later.

Chickens - and probably other birds too - can lay unfertilised eggs, which is handy for us humans, but they don't have the potential to turn into chicks.

*sits back and waits for proper biology/ornithology type to come along and explain things better.

Birds' eggs get fertilised before they're laid - in pretty much the 'usual way'. The shells aren't properly formed until much nearer the time of laying.

Chickens - and probably other birds too - can lay unfertilised eggs, which is handy for us humans, but they don't have the potential to turn into chicks.

*sits back and waits for proper biology/ornithology type to come along and explain things better.

"Birds' eggs get fertilised before they're laid"
Although if you said that birds eggs get fertilised when they get laid you still wouldn't be wrong

I was waiting for someone to make that observation.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

the egg, it was invented and used long before the chicken showed up


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Chickens, like other birds, have sex in pretty much the normal way.

Their bits are of a slightly different design and - I believe - that they do it face-to-face (beak-to-beak?) unlike most mammals.

B

All birds eggs get fertilized in the fallopian tube (or the bird equivelent of it)The egg and spem merge and the zygote continues to travel down the fallopian tube gathering nutrients and stuff until eventually (and at the very end) the ´shell´is applied. At this point the shell is very very soft and only hardens AFTER it has been laid....which is why eggs are egg shaped...
Zantic

The randy house-sparrows which have been 'at-it' most of the summer, on next door's porch roof, have certainly not been beak-to-beak.

Any birds I've seen 'in flagrante delicto' have involved male on top of female from behind, both facing the same way.

A la doggy fashion I suppose

Teuchter you're right, in this case B is talking complete rubbish.

Eggs are not soft shelled when they're laid, you can pick up a hen's egg straight after it's been laid (almost as they stand up as it were) and the shell is hard.

Right, that's birds more or less sussed.

What about bees - how do they do it?

They give hummers.

B

Likewise, all the wildlife programes on the telly have shown the cock on top of the hen.

What has always puzzled me though, is exactly how they do it. It seems to me that the tail feathers must get in the way. I can imagine for one moment that the hen has her naughty bits in her back!

Donald