How long can a chicken live without it's head?

Question

How long can a chicken live without it's head?

Answer 1

Till it gets tired of running around!!

Answer 2

It depends on how good of a job you do in decapitating the chicken. Do it right, and the bird will die after 10-20 seconds.

Do it wrong, and you've got a new pet (or freak show attraction). Check out Mike the Headless Chicken!

Answer 3

About 30 seconds.

Answer 4

You have to define the parameters for assessing death. Generally within five minutes, the blood will congeal and within ten minutes the heart will stop beating. rigor mortis sets in in 20 minutes after which most but not all reflexes will disappear.

to me a chicken without head is dead because whatever your definition of life is, you cannot include the chicken but you can include the tissues and cells of the body

Answer 5

like 10 seconds til the heart loses air

Answer 6

i'm asuming only a couple of minutes or seconds.

Answer 7

Yes, about 10 seconds.  When I was young my father raised chickens for food in the back yard.  Sometimes he cut their heads off to high on the neck and they would jump up and run around for about 10 seconds before falling over.

Technically speaking the chicken was brain dead within seconds.

When Antoine Lavoisier was condemned to death for being a tax collector by the guillotine during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, he instructed his assistant to count the number of times he blinked his eyes after his head was cut off.  Reports are that he blinked about 8 times.  He was a scientists to the bitter end.  The man who named oxygen, ironically the thing that the loss of ended his life.

Answer 8

The longest I've heard of is about 18 months.  He survived being decapitated for dinner.  Part of the brain stem was left, and he walked around and made pecking motions, and slept with his head stump under his wing.  His owners fed him food and water through the opening of the esophagus, and he only died when some food accidentally got into the trachea.

He was regarded as a great inspiration in terms of his will to live, and they say he looked as healthy and happy as any chicken.

At one time I had a pet rooster, and I am not too surprised to learn that the loss of the higher parts of the brain didn't make a lot of difference to this chicken.