Don't count your chickens before they are hatched.

Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.

Many count their chickens before they are hatched; and where they expect bacon, meet with broken bones.

1185. Count not your Chickens before they be hatch'd.

The plan of "counting the chickens before they are hatched" is an error of ancient date, but it does not seem to improve by age.

There's a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens.

The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin' at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in the fracas, then it's their turn. And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin' party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I seen it. A mighty awesome sight. The only way to prevent it — with chickens — is to clip blinders on them. So's they can't see.

To swallow gudgeons ere they 're catch'd,
And count their chickens ere they're hatch'd.

You know how chickens are, imagining the world coming to an end one moment, then pecking corn the next.

At night frantic men walked boldly to hen roosts and carried off the squawking chickens. If they were shot at, they did not run, but splashed sullenly away; and if they were hit, they sank tiredly in the mud.

I wouldn't if I were you, Noël; they count them before they put them out.

Most philosophers must have been raised on chicken farms. One hopes for so much from a chicken and is so dreadfully disillusioned. Small chickens, just setting out on the journey of life, look so bright and alert and they are in fact so dreadfully stupid. They are so much like people they mix one up in one's judgments of life.

Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.

Well they are very frightening for me because their stupidity is so flat. You look into the eyes of a chicken and you lose yourself in a completely flat, frightening stupidity. They are like a great metaphor for me... I kind of love chicken, but they frighten me more than any other animal.