Its always advisable to learn your way around your bird and all of the names of its different areas. everybody might know an eye or an ear but do you know where the lesser sickles can be found or if your bird has a broken Epistropheus would you honestly know that its necks broken?

You will find it very useful when you are buying your birds to know which feathers are which so that you can identify breed standards for showing and also when it comes to diagnosing one of the many diseases or illnesses.

I'm going to start at the top so let me introduce big boy, unfortunately no longer with us but he does make a fantastic model.

below is the points of the body that we need to know on a hen

And a Cockerel

The internal anatomy of a chicken has one very unique feature, that being the Gizzard. The purpose of this is that the bird will eat small stones and grit which they store inside the gizzard, the large muscles then work these stones like a mill which grind down the hard seeds snail shells etc which helps the bird digest them better.

warning the following images are photo's of the insides of a turkey, only look if you don't mind seeing the internal organs!!!

After going through the gizzard the food is then passed to the small intestine where enzymes and bile are mixed. the enzymes break down sugar fat and protein whilst the bile will help break down large fat molecules. The nutrients will now pass through the blood stream.

Internal Anatomy

The liver is helps to remove the toxins and recycles red blood cells some of which are made into bile and is stored in the gallbladder. The heart sits in between the lobes of the liver.

The pancreas which is located near the small intestine neutralizes acids that are passed from the stomach.

Whatever is left over after it has passed though now exits the cloaca or vent.

A healthy bird will pass droppings over 25 times a day because of the high metabolism. it only takes it three hours from eating the feed to passing the dropping. The dropping consists of two parts, the dark area is left over feed and the white pasty part is the urine.