This is interesting to me. I had decided all my rooster's behaviors were embedded in his genetic material. We were so amazed with our very first flock that the lone rooster knew what noises to make for ground predators, aerial predators, food, etc., and that the girls all automatically knew what these meant. It is not at all like a human baby learning a language from it's parents, as they are all babies together (assuming you get a bunch of day-olds) and somehow have this common language in their genes.
Of the 5 roosters we have kept for any period of time, 3 make a nest and call the girls over. With our first rooster, this also amazed me, because he made the nest and kept pushing the leghorn into it. It was our first egg, and I wondered how he knew she was about to lay. That is what has kept me fascinated with these birds. It also had me wondering what other animals had these "flock behaviors" that I knew nothing about previously. Just from brief conversations with our friend who raises cows, they have their own set of interesting behaviors. (Bees, too!)
And while I feel like I have so much to learn and understand about chickens, I am surprised that many people don't realize you can have eggs without a rooster, that roosters don't lay eggs, that different breeds lay different colors, and you can't hatch eggs if you don't have a rooster. And many children don't even know that eggs come from chickens!
