Bone Density: Rustic vs. Layer Chicken

Overview

Have you ever wondered why some birds have weaker bones than others? In this experiment, I wanted to figure out if chickens that lay eggs would have lower bone density because they used calcium to make egg shells. My question was who has denser bones, a rustic or layer chicken? My hypothesis was that if I test the density of rustic chicken bones it will be denser than layer chicken bones. I tested my hypothesis by taking both the rustic and the layer bones and weighing both of them. Next, I measured the volume of the bones using water displacement, where the bones were placed in a cap of water and the volume of water spilled out. Then I weighted the water weight to figure out the volume because 1 gram of water take up 1 mL of volume. I divided the bone weight by the water volume to get the density. The layer chicken bone density was 0.4 grams per mL. The rustic chicken bone density was 0.58 grams per mL. Then I had somebody x-ray the bones and compare them. The layer chicken bones were less dense than the rustic chicken bones. My experiment is important because it can help show people how making animals lay too many eggs in a short period of time can seriously affect their health.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Zoology (Junior Division) · Entry J-20-11

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Animal Sciences projects
• CSEF Animal Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2026 project