• Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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    3 hours ago

    I am an eye witness to such an event of chickens eating meat. Not chicken meat, but either beef or lamb.

  • FackCurs@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Can they reverse engineer this and have a spray that encourages cannibalism?

    I have the funniest idea for my next family dinner

  • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    Chicken will eat one another if they are in distress. It doesn’t have to be starvation. It can be too many chickens packed into a small space.

      • MothmanLives@lemdro.id
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        18 hours ago

        This happens with pigs, had to separate them when a baby was born ( I would have separated beforehand, but wasn’t up to me) but yeah they’ll eat all that stuff and occasionally a baby.

        • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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          14 hours ago

          People cause this level of social stunting by splitting up families and friends and then continue to tell themselves “it’s ok, they’re just livestock, so stupid!” and then take absolutely zero responsibility for fucking families up for so many generations that the animals become monsters to each other.

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours ago

      If you packed me like that with other humans, I would probably get pretty hangry and start taking bites out of the person next to me.

  • Hux@lemmy.ml
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    20 hours ago

    It sounds shocking at first, but then you realize they are all made of chicken…

  • Rose Thorne(She/Her)@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    “Easy to Use”. I certainly hope so, it’s a fucking spray bottle. What’s the hard to use option? Waiting until a new moon to summon Ba-Kok, God of Chickens to ask for a stay of cannibalism?

    • TomMasz@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      One of mine pecked the contact lens out of my eye. Went to the ER to have my eye checked, and they asked me if my wife had hit me. It took me a while to convince them it really was a chicken. Then they laughed.

    • rockerface 🇺🇦@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      Birds will eat anything if they’re hungry and/or bored enough. Eggshells are actually (usually) good for them because of high calcium content.

  • Today@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Do you think this is about chickens or about the way chickens are raised? Are chickens in the wild cannibalistic? This makes me not want to eat chicken ever again.

    • Rose Thorne(She/Her)@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Chickens are opportunistic omnivores. They will eat their dead, they will eat others eggs, they will eat their own goddamn eggs, if in desperate need.

      If that bothers you, never look into pigs and wild boar.

        • massive_bereavement@fedia.io
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          24 hours ago

          My experience was that they ate their eggs due calcium deficit (my vet’s advice). Adding a calcium source to their diet fixed it permanently.

          • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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            21 hours ago

            Oh, that’ll definitely get them doing it. But sometimes, they just decide that thing looks yummy and go for it, even when they’ve got good calcium supply in their feed.

    • psychadlligoat@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      Wild chickens do this, yeah. They’ll insistently peck at anything red, this spray is usually for if a bird is injured to stop others or themselves pecking it and making it worse

      you can also use it to help deter roosters who are getting too violent on hens, as they’ll peck and pull out feathers during the mating process

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Chickens will definitely pick and peck at each other until things get ugly, even with all possible room to roam. It isn’t caused by poor conditions like too small cages and such, but factory level conditions definitely make the problem worse.

      You can have an acre and a handful of hens, and they’ll at least occasionally peck at each other. The problem really only starts when there’s an injury, or conditions prevent a bird from moving away from more peck heavy birds. You don’t want an injured chicken kept with the flock. It isn’t even necessarily eating the injured bird out of some kind of prey drive. They just go at even minor wounds.

      Now, with enough space and care being taken, that isn’t likely to result in death. But it can, no matter how much room is involved if you don’t isolate injured birds.

      I’m not sure exactly how “wild” you’re thinking, since you aren’t going to run into truly wild chickens in most places. But feral ones that started as kept birds, those you’ll find in plenty of places. Our neighborhood has two flocks that started from abandoned birds something like twenty years ago. And they’ll definitely eat the hell out of one of their own if it gets sick or injured. And they’ll absolutely eat one of their own that gets killed by a car or whatever.

      We have a partly feral hen that decided she owns our yard. A while back, her comb got injured, and we had to keep our other hen inside long enough for the injury to heal, since we couldn’t catch the volunteer hen. They see a little blood, and they’re like “yum!”, the same as they do when they see a worm or bug or even a piece of meat.

      And chickens will eat any meat they can get to. Chicken is even considered a good food for chickens. Won’t hurt them, plenty of protein, and they’ll gladly pick the bones clean of scraps.

      • Today@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        I’ve seen chicken roaming the streets, sitting in planters, generally acting like feral cats in Key West. They didn’t seem mean. I really thought they ate plants and bugs and things. I bet they eat a lot of dead lizards there.

        • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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          20 hours ago

          Oh yeah, chickens will wreck lizards, alive or dead.

          They really are predators, just not exclusively so.

          Our rooster sometimes gets in the mood and will go out into the brush and run down mice and such. The hens usually just grab what comes to them though. They’re plenty satisfied with their feed, the occasional egg that they don’t want around, and bugs. But if a small rodent catches their eyes, it is on. There will be mighty roars! Okay, more loud and satisfied buking with the sounds of thrashing as they dismember their prey.

          But they aren’t really mean per se. They’re just driven by instincts more than a lot of critters. They see blood, and that means food, even if it’s a flock member bleeding. They have to establish their hierarchy within the flock, and that does come with some (okay, a lot sometimes) pecking, but it isn’t being done just for the fun of it. It admissions maintains a stable flock and ensures resources for the ones that are on top if resources run low.

          As long as there’s plenty of food and space, they don’t kill each other intentionally, as in to eat. They’re just highly motivated, and it goes bad sometimes.

          They can be really sweet to each other, and to humans. My little hen is sitting here on the arm of the couch preening and seeking attention as I type this. Every evening when she comes in, we cuddle a bit before she naps. And she’ll nestle with both the other birds at times as well. She’ll also keep both of them in line with pecks as needed, including the big numpty of a rooster that’s twice her size, but ten minutes later they’ll be in their little spots next to each other being companionable.

          They aren’t exactly smart, or even highly complex in the way you might expect birds to be if you’ve been around parrots and their ilk. But they do have that mix of vicious instinct and affection that a lot of social animals have.

          If you’re interested, in my post history, last sunday I did my usual weekly comment in the !casualconversation@piefed.social pets sunday post. I put pictures of our three in the comment. The community used to be at !casualconversation@lemm.ee , but that instance is shutting down. But I’ve been telling stories about our adventures in chickening for a while now. They are endlessly entertaining to me lol.

          • Today@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            Thanks. I’ve read your posts about your little hen and her nighttime ritual. Sweet, bossy girl.

            Chickens sounds like the cats of the bird world. Lovey and vicious. Would eat you if they were hungry, or maybe just for fun.

            • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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              17 hours ago

              We have household joke that the hen is allowed to eat our eyeballs, particularly if we’re dead, but not limited to that state.

      • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Chicken is even considered a good food for chickens. Won’t hurt them, plenty of protein, and they’ll gladly pick the bones clean of scraps

        That’s what they used to say about cows too…

      • Today@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        We do sometimes justify going to Chick-fil-A as only eating the homophobic chickens.

    • Kirp123@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Chickens are omnivores. They will eat anything they can get their beaks on. I saw them eat mice, dead rats, their own eggs, other chickens.

      Chickens also have a very brutal pecking order. The chickens on the lower end of that order will get bullied pretty bad and lose feathers. Once they draw blood the other chickens my join in and peck the wounded chicken and break away pieces of it or even kill it.

      This is the worst if the chickens are stressed but it happens even in chickens that are living in good conditions. One of the better way to counter it is to have a rooster with the chickens as the rooster will reprimand the bullies and break any fights between hens. A lot of chicken farmers don’t want to do that though because roosters will fight each other to death if you put multiple in the same enclosure and in the case of egg laying chickens they don’t lay eggs and will mate with the chickens which makes them lay fertilized eggs.

    • 0ops@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      My family used to raise chickens when I was a kid. The chickens were free-range (only house for like a mile), but they had a coop to eat and nest in, which we shut every night. When getting new chickens to add to the flock (neighbor has too many, etc), we’d keep them in a “chicken tractor” for a few weeks (basically a small, mobile chicken coop). I guess that gave everyone time to get used to each other’s smells or something, because the few times we didn’t do that the new chickens would get pecked in the head by the locals, and once the locals realize that the new ones taste like blood it’s pretty much over for the new chickens.