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It's serious business. The paperwork is a nightmare though. The rich farmers have lawyers to file the appropriate writs, petitions, and incantations to stay the cannibalism. For those without the money, going before Ba-Kok can be intimidating and challenging.

Bruh, if there's a "spray" AND "stream" option on my spray bottle, I'll just lock up with indecision. Ease of use is very important when dealing with spray bottles.

ARISE CHICKEN

The "hard" option is to just get rid of the hen that turned cannibal. It's going to be just one, unless you're running an egg factory level operation. Give the hens more space and actual yard time, and most will stop pecking. The one that doesn't goes in the soup pot.

I mean, it could come in suppository form....

Ba-Kok, God of Chickens

This keeps getting funnier the more times I read it. Good show.

Rise, chicken. Chicken, arise.

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.

The ICD list has some insane stuff.

Y36511D: War operations involving direct blast effect of nuclear weapon, civilian, subsequent encounter

Been a long time since we have had chickens. But We did try a product that made the same claims. It didn't really work in my opinion.

Best to have fresh greens and insects for them to hunt and not to over crowd them.

Or one of them could scratch themselves on a fence and the smell of blood sets off a fucking frenzy.

They are dinosaurs bro.

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.

Yeah np

Lemmy has now redeemed the second of three wishes.

Yes.

You are what you eat

Chickens will eat almost anything. I once saw a chicken grab a frog and swallow it whole. One of its legs was hanging out of her mouth the rest of the day. She was fine afterwards.

Eggs are also especially tasty to them. You can feed them cooked eggs (very nutritious), but if they ever get ahold of a broken egg and realize how tasty they are, they can start eating their freshly laid eggs before you can collect them.

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.

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

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.

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.

Reduces, not eliminates

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