Poultry World editor Phil Clarke may need to go on a hen handling course - but there's nothing wrong with his footballing skills..

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Puppies and chickens have appeared before on this blog.

They never fail to delight:

Chickens often punch above their weight when it comes to exposure in the national media, and the chook that graced the turf at Ewood Park last weekend was no exception. 

The bird was released on to the pitch in protest at the management policies of Blackburn Rovers Indian owners, the Venky chicken business, on the day that the club was relegated from the Premiership.

It was a splendid performance by the chook which, according to Google rankings, subsequently appeared in over 1,300 news articles. Furthermore, the bird could only be caught once it hit the back of the Wigan net - which was more than Blackburn Rovers could achieve.

As a bit of a poultry anorak, my only complaint is that it was clearly a layer and not a broiler, which would have better epitomised the Venky's business interests.

PS This is not the first time I've seen a feathered intruder at a football game. Reading about it took me back to the early 1980s when I found myself in the North Stand of Ipswich Town's Portman Road ground, up close to where all the Norwich supporters were "caged" in. Some local character had smuggled in a budgie and a can of lighter fuel. Well, I'll spare you the gory details. Suffice to say it didn't end happily for the budgie....

Gunter, the Feathered Forager mascot, is renowned for his wanderlust.

The past two years has seen him in as far flung places as Switzerland:

                 Brussels:

                 and Kentucky:But even we admit that these exploits have been totally eclipsed (geddit?) by those of another mascot chook called Camilla.

Camilla belongs to those space nerds at NASA and she has recently been sent "where no chook has gone before" into Earth's stratosphere as part of an experiment to measure the effect of the recent solar storm.

The bar has been raised....

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OK, I know that pigeons are not strictly poultry - but they do have feathers, so are eminently well qualified to appear on this blog.

And this pair have definitely been "hard at it", building what I hesitate to describe as "a nest" right outside our bathroom window.

Pathetic really - it's taken them four days to get this far. The problem is, every time one of them takes off in search of food, (or we open the bathroom window), most of the nest falls to the ground.

Judging by the pile of twigs accumulating outside our back door, I can't help thinking they'd have a better chance nesting at ground level...

A hen has shed some light on the age-old question of what cames first? The chicken or the egg?

The Sri-Lanka hen gave birth to a eggless chick, the BBC reported.

Normally hens lay an egg and it is incubated outside the body for 21 days before being hatched.

But in a bizarre twist the egg was incubated inside the hen and hatched inside the body.

The chick is fully-formed and healthy, although the mother died of internal wounds, a post-mortem revealed.

The classic "Go to work on an egg" ad has made a minor comeback, appearing alongside a series of commercials from the 1960s in the advertising breaks during the first episode of the new series of Mad Men.

The ads starred legendary comedian Tony Hancock and the slogan is attributed to Fay Weldon, although she claims she was just the manager of the team who created the famous line.

Never ones to miss an opportunity to push their product, the ads have been latched onto by the British Egg Industry Council

"Although the black and white ads may have aged slightly, the messages are still as relevant today," said BEIC chairman Andrew Parker.

"Eggs offer fantastic value, are one of the most nutritious foods money can buy and are a great natural source of nutrients, including high quality protein, vitamins and minerals. This is why eggs are still as popular as ever, more than 50 years on."

For those (of us) who can't remember the ads, here's a taster

Poultry World took an interesting call from a bloke call Ahmed this morning asking about the Pig and Poultry Fair in May.

I explained it was a free event and all he needed to do was turn up to explore the manifold buisness opprtunities on offer at the show. But he was inistent that we send his boss in Tunisia a formal invitation to come to the event.

Subsequent investigation reveals that the show organisers are getting loads of such inquiries at the moment. But they are all to do with people trying to get a visa out of the region, rather than a real interest in the Fair. Interesting.

The International Egg Commission has started its spring conference with a welcome reception at the Molino Stucky Hilton in Venice. Nice!