Do Chickens Have Ovaries?

The hubs works with a woman who has a farm, and she brings in fresh eggs for her co-workers to buy. In the dozen eggs we got from her, there is one teeny, tiny egg. I guess it's not that tiny, just tiny relative to a standard large chicken egg. So then I got to thinking: what determines the size of the egg? How often do chickens lay eggs? And where do the eggs come from? Human females are born with all of their eggs and then once they reach menstruation age during adolescence, they release on egg per month. Chickens, being as small as they are, can't be born with all of their eggs. At least not full sized ones, right? So then I wondered if chickens even have ovaries?

So I did what any good researcher would do: I Googled it. The exact phrase I Googled was "do chickens have ovaries?" Now the results weren't from any academic source, such as the ones I require my students to use when doing research. But I did find some information posted by chicken farmers, so I figured that they probably know what they're talking about. Here is some interesting information about chickens, eggs, and ovaries.

1) Yes, they do have ovaries.
2) Believe it or not, the egg laying process for a chicken begins in its eye. Chickens lay eggs only after receiving a light cue, either from natural sunlight entering a coop or artificial light illuminating a commercial egg hatchery. The light stimulates a photo-receptive gland near the chicken's eye, which in turn triggers the release of an egg cell from the chicken's ovary. (So I guess this means that they already have eggs in their ovaries, yes? But they must be microscopic. They can't be full-sized Grade A large eggs. A chicken ovary can't hold all of those eggs.)
3) Chickens lay about one egg every 26 hours. They tend to lay one egg per day for about six days before resting for a day. This is particularly true for chickens in captivity. Wild chickens and other wild birds may rest for months before laying more eggs.
4) Chickens less than one year old (called pullets) lay small eggs and will lay larger ones when they get older. Pullets also tend to lay one egg every three to four days and then increase the frequency of their laying (sounds dirty - like a chicken whore!) when they get older.
5) Chickens do not need a rooster to lay eggs. In fact, if the goal of the farmer is to produce eggs, the roosters must be kept away. The eggs we get at the grocery store are unfertilized. If the egg becomes fertilized, it'll turn into a chick. (I guess this makes sense - human women can ovulate without a male but needs male sperm to create a baby.)
6) And finally, one tidbit of info that I already knew: there is no nutritional difference between white and brown eggs.

So now I have learned a number of very interesting facts about chickens, eggs, and ovaries. In fact, I think I've learned a lot about birds in general this year. For example, in the spring, I learned that blue jays and cardinals don't mate and produce purple birds because blue jays and cardinals are different species. Good to know.