One of the artifacts of keeping chickens and ducks in our backyard, is that I’ve come to realise what a large number of poultry based metaphors there are in the English language, and I get to experience the following sayings in their original context …

• chicken brain
• ruffled feathers
• pecking order
• like water off a ducks back
• don’t count your chickens before they hatch
• rotten egg / good egg
• broody
• clipped wings
• rule the roost
• come home to roost
• treading on eggshells
• henpecked

One metaphor that I haven’t yet seen in its original form, and which I do not intend to enact is …

• running around like a chook with its head cut off