Quote: This isn't pecking to reinforce the hierarchy, unfortunately. This behaviour I have not even seen in roosters during battle; it's an outright attempt at cannibalism. The chick is treating the other chicks as food and trying to get mouthfuls of them. It's not treating them like other chickens. Chickens do not grab onto one another's faces and shake to work out the pecking order. I agree that this behaviour is pretty much guaranteed to continue into adulthood. I wouldn't trust any bird that's been forcibly prevented or forced to quit the behaviour with my flock, because as this chick is showing, that's an inherited behaviour, and there's every chance it will remain that way or resume at a later date.
Regarding honey containing bacteria that might be harmful to a baby's system: when you cook honey at anything approaching a high temperature you cook much of the goodness out of it and it becomes only marginally better than sugar, basically a mineralized form of it. Most honey sold in shops is cooked. Once it's cooked, any bacteria can live in it as it's lost its antibacterial properties. Honey is sold for medicinal uses in many places and of course that's not cooked. None of it should be; it's a food, a medicine orally or topically, a lifesaving substance in many cases for many species, and specifically a great feed for babies. It's regaining much of its former prestige as a medicine and health tonic.
Too much is laxative but good honey won't have the same effect as white sugar. Even raw sugar doesn't have anywhere near the detrimental effect of refined white sugar. Unfortunately our commercial hives are often not only chemically treated but the bees are often fed white sugar water to boost production and enable them to get by on an excessive plundering of their stored honey. That's old news though, I don't know what they're up to now, but the hive keepers I know are becoming more focused on natural honey as everyone's sick of the adulterated stuff bought in stores.
I know a severe Coeliac's sufferer who cannot even take one teaspoon of refined white sugar or she's on death's door and bedridden for the next half a year, in terrible suffering. But she can eat raw cane sugar, fructose, lactose, xylitol, honey, and a few other forms of natural sugars that aren't over refined as well as some that are slightly more refined. Just explicitly NO refined white sugar. She has a stymied disagreement with the woman who runs our local organics shop because this woman firmly believes all sugars are the same. They're not, in fact they're vastly different and of course there's nutritional science to back that up too, even if like that woman you have no personal experience with noticeable negative effects due to that not being your particular achilles heel.
