• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    101·
    4 days ago

    Chickens Starving, Resorting to Cannibalism at Government-Subsidized Poultry Company

    Complainants from the foundering company’s Iowa slaughterhouse began contacting PETA last month, reporting that thousands of birds were being left for days without food or water on trucks parked at the facility as the company struggled to slaughter them. PETA immediately alerted U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) leadership to each of these complaints, offering to connect them with the eyewitnesses so that they could investigate and end the birds’ illegal suffering—but the agency never responded.

    In response, PETA sent a letter this week to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack calling on him to investigate the USDA’s failure to fulfill its duties and to stop throwing taxpayer money at bad actors like Pure Prairie Poultry.

    Incidentally, cannibalism is one powerful vector for disease mutation and spread.

    • TacoSocks@infosec.pubEnglish
      21·
      4 days ago

      I like this one better, doesn’t sponsor a shitty corporation and has the extra layer of eating his own leg.

  • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
    241·
    4 days ago

    Chickens love to eat chicken, I’ve seen it myself. Of course they will eat literally anything. Their main way of determining what is edible it just to try to eat it and if it works then they eat it and if not… well best to try a few more times just to be sure.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    49·
    4 days ago

    As others have already said, chickens do not discriminate when it comes to eating. They’re savage.

    If a chicken gets injured, you have to (usually) isolate it. Not because of infection risk, but because the others will peck and eat them down to bone. There’s folks that have had it turn into a mini apocalypse. One bird gets hurt, gets pecked, and the squabbles cause injury to another one, and then everyone in the flock is at it.

    There’s one of the YouTube “homestead” people that lost something like a dozen hens because one of them was plucking feathers until the others were bleeding, and it spread.

    Unlike a lot of livestock, chickens can actually eat chicken safely. It doesn’t do them any harm. To the contrary, it’s a good food for them overall, it just can’t be their main food.

    My little hen has grabbed chicken that fell on the floor before and gone to town on it. Then begged for more.

    Hens eating eggs is also fairly common. Their own, other chickens’ eggs, whatever. Roosters won’t always eat egg, but hens will eat the shells in specific like it’s going out of style. Can’t recommend letting them eat the innards of the egg though. It comes out the other end eventually, and the smell is horrid.

    The calcium of the shells is good for them.

    Chickens are pretty damm cool tbh. When we got our first one, I hadn’t been around any since I was a kid at my uncle’s farm, and those were working hens. As pets, they’re sometimes difficult, but very rewarding. I was just snuggling our rooster about a half hour ago.

    Big old guy; without his feathers he’d be basketball size. With them, he’s a beast. But come his bedtime, he gets to relax instead of having to be on swivel constantly. So I’ll sit with him in my chair on the back porch, scratching under his neck feathers and petting him while he’s nestled under my arm. Tonight, he was melting. Got so relaxed he was almost sliding off my lap.

    The pet hen is sitting on my wife’s leg right now, kinda purring as she naps. She’ll come over to me later and get snuggled in under my arm until her bedtime. If she goes in too early, she gets mad and wants back on the couch with me, so she gets to stay out longer lol.