What's one fact about poultry that SHOCKED you?

[PippinTheChicken]

Were you told or read a fact about poultry that really surprised you. Now it's you chance to shock and educate everyone!

 

[The Moonshiner]

I've found it extremely crazy how much misinformation there is out there about poultry and the amount of people that will believe anything they find on Google.

 

[Aapomp831]

I read that when the chick is developing, it develops in the egg with one eye pressed against the shell (the black blob you see when candling), which becomes the nearsighted eye... the one used for foraging. The other eye is farsighted and used for scanning the sky and across the fields for danger. That’s why they tilt their heads in different directions while doing one or the other. Thought that was incredibly awesome!

 

[JedJackson]

Nothing shocks me anymore. But I wasn't thrilled when I read chickens engage in cannibalism.

 

[Callender Girl]

I was most shocked when I saw one of my hens eating a baby bird that fell out of a tree. Seeing its little feet sticking out of her beak kinda made me sick.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I've got muscovies.
Once I had a little Cochin hatch 5 or 6 chicks. She came parading through with them lined up behind her. Two muscovy hens darted over and quickly ate all the chicks.
Never expected that.

 

[Geckolady]

I heard the term "mother hen" many times, and thought all hens would mother all chicks. Reality is, if a strange chicken is smaller than them, war is probably imminent.

 

[AntiqueB]

I never thought they would love to eat styrofoam so very much.

How quickly they grew also shocked me. Chicks one day, flying out of the brooder a couple weeks later.

 

[Chookchicken]

I was on google and I found out that chickens don't always try to reproduce with the opposite gender.... this may explain...View attachment 2622856its quite sweet actually

The reason they do this is because their trying to assert dominance over the other chicken involved. As much as it is a nice idea, chickens don’t actually feel that kind of love for each other.

 

[topochico225]

The fact that they really are tiny dinosaurs. My friend once had a family of rats under her plastic Rubbermaid shed. Biiiiiiiiiig nest of little pink, wrinkly babies. While one of her kids ran for the BB gun, the chickens swooped in and

on all those little babies. Not a single piece of crime scene evidence left.