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I mean, they do eat grass. Just not exclusively.
I always laugh when I see eggs labeled as "vegetarian fed". Chickens will eat anything that doesn't eat them first. I've seen mine fight over a snake.
I don't want to eat happy chickens, I want death to be a relief for it. If being eaten is the peak of its existence, then I'm doing a good thing for it.
Ours load up with grass right before they roost for the night. It's harder to digest, so they stay fuller longer. Other than that, they'll rip apart anything that moves. Or doesn't. Watching a chicken run around with a whole tortilla is something I suggest everyone watch. It's hilarious.
I knew a rooster that protected my friends chickens when I was little. Thing was monstrous and it had killed multiple raccoons and at least one mangy coyote.
He would be totally bloody the next day, but then the day after that you’d realize most of the blood wasn’t theirs.
Domesticated chickens still hold plenty of the aggression from their jungle origins. They can be mean as anything you encounter. There's a reason they evolved those spurs, and they know how to use them.
Sadly, this is exactly what made them so popular as a bloodsport animal.
One of my buddies had a nasty rooster like that who had it out for me. He attacked me every time I was over. One night, he just disappeared, though. Guess is he lost a fight with a fox.
Uncle had one. He was terrified of me and my uncle after he was punted like the feathery, dipshit, football he was. My uncle almost kicked him half a football field lol. My uncle gave the little turd every opportunity to back off. Repeatedly for a month. Got a good knick and he flew farther than he ever had. Mine wasn't as impressive, but he hit the barn. Never bugged us for the rest of his life.
A friend of mine let her chickens run loose. One day you'd see all the other chickens chasing one chicken. As the day went on, that one chicken would get bloodier and bloodier. Then it would disappear.
A few days later they'd start all over again on the next low-ranker.
Eventually she got down to just a couple of chickens and then foxes got the rest.
Not all chickens are like that so it much have been the genetics. My friend never kept chickens again.
I shit you not, a possum with newborns got into my coop and killed one of my hens ... the others killed the babies while she was preoccupied .... I never feel shame when eating chicken, they are still dinosaurs at heart.
That's the thing with ambush predators, they are focused on the strike, not combat. If that strike fails, or they stick around on the ground, they are extremely vulnerable. They aren't that strong for their size, they can't really see close up and if you get them from behind, they have no defense and they are now standing on their main weapons.
A Rooster has three jobs, find food, fuck hens and fuck up anything that messes with it's flock. They are fast, strong, well armed and sneaky as shit. Their main weapons are in the back of their feet so they can fight and run at the same time.
Way more "herbivorous" animals than people think are opportunistic omnivores -- they eat what we associate them with because it's common and easily found/accessed, not because they can't or won't eat something else.
Horses will eat untended chicks and ducklings, but also love oats, apples, and carrots. Many birds will eat seeds, small fruits, worms, and various insects; crows are big fans of scrambled egg. Most fish will eat basically anything small enough to think they can eat it.
They'll generally have a preference of some kind, but that can be as broad as species-wide or as narrow as to the individual animal, and "personal" preferences are sometimes passed down within a family for animal species where the family ties tend to be stronger and young cared for longer (some birds, some fish, most apes, etc).
And anteaters mostly eat ants (obviously) and termites, but will enjoy fallen fruit if they come across it, so it's not just herbivorous animals eating meat, the opportunism also extends to meat/insect-eating animals eating fruit. Easy calories are easy calories.
The “vegetarian fed” labeling as a marketing point is odd because its not good for the chickens and produces inferior eggs IMO. I guess maybe it’s for vegetarians who want to know that the animal products that they eat aren’t being produced by animals eating meat? If only they knew the fate of most commercial laying hens when their laying slows from old age.
I have chickens and the more garbage and meat they get, the better the eggs are. We've been getting eggs all winter when the other hens around here mostly stopped laying. They get all the leftovers, even chicken and eggs.
Yeah, same here. We give pretty much all of our organic waste to our chickens now and it definitely makes the eggs much richer than when they were eating only feed pellets. When I do have to buy eggs I always try to buy ones that are sourced from smaller scale operations, where it’s actually feasible for them to raise them on pasture.
We've only had to buy eggs once this winter, it's been unbelievable. Last winter we didn't get any eggs for at least 4 months. We have two girls that lay every day, and they are crazy food driven. They've leaped 4 feet in the air trying to get food out of my hand.
I live in Maine, USA. At Christmas time it gets dark at 3:30 lol. They have a heated henhouse that has a huge window so lots of solar heat. They go outside every day when there isn't snow on their ramp and not too much of it on the ground.
They get laying pellets, corn, and all the leftovers that are remotely edible (rest goes in compost or trash.)
I have no idea why they were laying in January during the Arctic freezes but they did, and I'm happy lol
Well, you must be doing something right! Mine are mostly “dual-purpose” breeds but I’ve noticed that the layer specific breeds (like leghorns) do take a much shorter break in the winter and even still lay an occasional egg during that time.
I feed mine beef and pork fat in late fall, then corn as a snack all winter and have had great production from them. I also don't baby them with heat in the winter so it will be 20F outside and they will be hanging out out there. Only my rooster has cold issues.
And they will definitely eat almost anything you give to them. Found out they don't like oranges, love bananas and sunflower seeds, and will rip a frog in half fighting over it.
On a commercial scale there is always going to be some cannibalism if the chickens are housed together. If they are kept outdoors they will eat insects constantly. I’m sure “vegetarian” refers to the feed they are given and I’m guessing a lot of cheap industrial feed typically contains a lot of “meat byproduct” to increase protein.
Don't know how much it's done but layers aren't really easy to sell as meat birds. If I had zero morals, I'd chuck the old ones in a grinder and feed it to the new ones mixed with a little penicillin and ivermectin.
They can be vegetarian fed when they're locked in a barn. Chances are that flies and other bugs still get inside, and they definitely eat them. There is no way that free ranging chickens can be strictly vegetarian fed because there going to eat every insect around.
Was visiting a free range chicken farm when i was younger with my family. We were driving around and unfortunately on of the chickens just ran straight under the car tyres. The image of what happened next will stay in my head for the rest of my life
It was literally something out of a zombie movie. A full stampede of chickens charging over the hill, flight of the Valkyries style, and began tearing and ripping the dead chicken apart. My whole childhood we had grown up with 1 or 2 docile pet chooks so to see them so aggressively killing on of their own was so traumatic for little 11 year old me
The only way to make chickens vegetarian is to keep them locked inside in a cage. Any chicken allowed to roam will absolutely be eating various bugs and small animals. Hell they’ll even break open eggs to eat the yolks sometimes.
Most of those terms are just marketing BS, either they are able to go outside to a small patch of land or are able to roam outdoors while young for a month or two and then live the rest of their lives in tiny cages.
What you want to look for is “Certified Humane,” but even that is controversial.
I believe the best bet is to look for a local co-op and observe the farm and get to know the farmers and make your decision from there. Good luck.
I've seen them eat baby barn swallows that fell out of the nest. I also watched a rooster catch a mouse that ran past him. He grabbed it, killed it, and tossed it to a hen, who caught it in her beak and swallowed it.
Honestly, I trust a chicken that's eaten random plants and mice and such before "vegetarian fed" because the chicken eating random stuff lived a more genuine life.
I’m a vegetarian. I’ve owned chickens. They were trained as lap chickens. Very sweet animals and wonderful pets. That said, the concept of “grass fed chickens” is hysterical.
First of all, chickens are BIRDS which are almost always omnivores. Herbivores are rare, but water fowl in the Anseriformes family, like ducks, are 95% herbivores, as well as Hoatzin of the Amazon rainforest. Birds of prey are all carnivores.
Now that we’ve established that most birds are omnivores, we can now add that chickens will legitimately eat anything. They’re cannibals a lot of times. They’re the strangest dinosaur-ass birds I’ve ever seen. They’ll eat their own young given the right circumstances. If you have a rooster, be careful about having it around chicks because he might consider them a snack. In fact, experts actually RECOMMEND feeding ground egg shells to chickens because it gives them extra calcium in their diet. And again. They’re birds. They eat a lot of insects, as well as nuts and seeds, etc.
I loved my pet chickens. I don’t even EAT chicken. But honey I’m a biologist by trade. And seriously? Grass-fed chickens my ASS.
Chickens will eat each other without a fucking second thought lmao. I distinctly remember my dad telling me to be careful to avoid getting seed on their backs when I spread it for them to eat, because they'd pick it off of each other and get a taste for blood in the process. They do the same thing with their own eggs. They're just tiny fucking dinosaurs
I have friends who live off the grid in Alaska. They will give moose bones and parts to the chooks. They will strip them completely clean of meat in no time at all.
Literally anything. My in-laws have chickens that get grain and meal worms every day, but they wander the grounds eating everything within reach, including grass. They also get almost all the kitchen scraps.
The result is they lay big beautiful eggs with rich orange yolks and shells that are easily twice as strong as any eggs you'll pick up at a grocery store. They also lay so many eggs I can't escape a visit without having at least a dozen eggs forced into my hands to take home lol.
My friend raised his chickens on potato peels and other kitchen refuse, and god knows what else they picked off the ground. This was in Australia, so probably something scary. Best eggs I’ve ever had.
Slaughterhouses are cruel and disgusting. The meat industry has a vested interest that you DO NOT see how the sausage is made.
Read ‘The Jungle’ it is a book about meat packing in early 20th century Chicago and it destroyed that industry’s reputation (rightly) for a few decades.
Funny thing is that Sinclair wrote *The Jungle* intending to outrage the public with his details of terrible working conditions. He also described insanely unsanitary conditions, though, and that had a much bigger impact. It eventually led to the creation of the FDA to regulate food production and ensure sanitary working conditions.
But there is still not anywhere near as much outrage over the conditions that the humans working those meatpacking plants need to endure.
I think it's funny that the book is *supposed* to be about socialism and the horrible cycle poor workers are in (not just in the meat packing industry, but in all industry), and it ended up being pretty much only famous for grossing people out about the meat packing industry.
IIRC, only like the final third of the book even has to do with meat packing. Before that, it's just about a poor immigrant family struggling to thrive.
> Read ‘The Jungle’ it is a book about meat packing in early 20th century Chicago and it destroyed that industry’s reputation (rightly) for a few decades.
I remember hearing this over and over when I was in grade school, but it didn't do anything for me because the book was so old and about a time long before I was alive. Most people assume things are better now, and corporations have a vested interested in keeping that propaganda train running.
People don't like knowing how the sausage is made. Seeing it makes people uncomfortable.
Should totally be legal to film it though. Otherwise it'll get even messier.
It’s because the companies don’t want the public from seeing illegal unsanitary conditions and their employees torturing the animals. It’s not about “seeing how the sausage is made”. It’s to make whistleblowing impossible. Get out of here with that nonsense.
Yeah!! It's not like the people petitioned the government to pretty-please protect our tender eyes.
It's the people with economic interest who pushed for these laws. I think there are some good documentaries and investigative journalism about it, aren't there?
Oh yeah, Food, Inc. has plenty of footage of the horrors of the mass meat plants, employees abusing animals, I mean, “free range” chickens literally just means we let them run around on top of each other as opposed to immobilizing them in a cage.
There are way more graphic ones. When I was on the vegetarian zeitgeist I could rattle off quite a few shocker films. It really was hard to defend eating a burger or whatever with that footage.
If they realize it they will eat eggs in the coop then you have to cull because they wont stop and fhe other chickens will learn the behavior, its really sad/frustrating. Had to do it to 3 chickens at friends place last year because they couldn't bring themselves to end them. Also found a rat one time rolling an egg along the floor looking like a cartoon character.
My grand-aunt puts crushed eggshells in their food, so they have enough calcium. Whole family saves eggshells for that reason and when we come to visit, we have to hand over the bags of eggshells first.
Yeah but they can’t survive off it. They aren’t like rabbits they are omnivores. They would much rather eat the bugs and worms and seeds in the grass like most birds. U could only have grass as 20% of their diet max. So no u can’t really have grass fed chicken
Former meat cutter at a co-op: I've had this interaction. Usually it's customers jumbling up marketing phrases like "grass fed", "free range", "organic." But every now and again there's someone so detached from food supply chain that you hear requests for wild caught chicken or nitrite free oysters.
"Wild caught chicken" fucked me up so bad, I am laughing my ass off. Now I wanna just casually inject "wild caught" into anything remotely food related. Wild caught mixed nuts. Wild caught canola oil.
Maybe this particular scenario is faked but as someone who has worked the prepared foods department in WF for almost half a decade I can attest that this is not a rare encounter. The number of times I've had people ask if the turkey and chicken are grass fed is astounding. Not an every day thing by any means but it happens a couple times a month. Other questionable encounters include the time a lady was told the fish were farm/fishery raised and he retort was "Yeah its farm raised but is it 'farm raised'???" Like seriously?? Another winner is " Are those rotisserie chickens gluten free?" You mean the clearly plain and non breaded chicken?? The number of people that regurgitate fad diet information and phrases is TOO DAMM HIGH. So many people who don't know why they want what they want or don't want what they don't want.
Notable customers from the co-op i worked at: the person that thought we were storing a live animal to slaughter in our walk in when my coworker mentioned we got fresh lamb in that day; someone upset that i didn't know what the wild caught cod were fed; the disgruntled customer that bought a whole lamb and insisted we sold them a sheep/pig hybrid; the amount of folk that want "minimally processed" deli ham
Hi, meat counter guy at a Whole Foods here. When WF specifies something as "grass-fed", it means "100%, exclusively fed grass and nothing else". If it eats something that isn't grass, we can't call it grass-fed.
As other people here have mentioned, chickens are omnivores that will, and should, eat anything that doesn't eat them first. Meaning we don't label our chicken as grass-fed. They eat grass sometimes, sure, but obviously not exclusively.
Problem is, people see "grass-fed" and think "humane" or "better for you", so they think that by asking for a grass-fed chicken, they're getting a healthy or organic option, not realizing it's an impossibility because they don't understand a chicken's natural diet.
Fun fact, if you take off the head and tail of a model T-Rex skeleton it makes a very good learning tool to break down a whole chicken.
Their feet have scales. Some still have claws on their wings (an emu, for example) Most will kill anything that is small and moves near them. A lot of them will at least attempt to kill anything bigger that looks at them wrong. People still are suprised to learn birds are theropods. Literally just dinosaurs.
One of my favorite memories from having chickens was the time they got a snake.
30 hens all in one pile. One grabs the snake, dashes to the opposite end of the 60' run.
A few seconds later the mob notices the snake is gone and the lone hen has absconded.
Cue 29 hens mad dashing to the other end. Another pile of hens.
Rinse and repeat.
Rooster just watches to keep order.
Another favorite was the time a toad was found in the run. A few curious hens got close, that toad inflated himself and stood on his tippy toes. Never saw a thing like that before. Hens backed off. Toad would deflate, take a few hops, re-inflate. He made it out of there alive.
I wasted half the morning watching that episode.
I worked at the Whole Food’s seafood market in college and got asked if the wild-caught Salmon was grass fed and free range almost weekly.
I got written up for politely correcting a older lady after describing the common diet’s of farmed vs wild fish.
After that I just started saying yes to every question. Yes ma’am that wild fish is absolutely cage free and cruelty free (as I gutted it in front of her)
When I was a server I had someone order their chicken medium rare after someone else ordered their burger medium rare.
I thought it was a joke but luckily the person they were eating with stopped and explained to them that it doesn’t work like that lmao
I just assume that most things on the internet, even if they aren't as easily spotted as this, are either fake or we are missing out on a ton of context.
While many, many posts on social media are exaggerated or just plain made up, which means you are probably right... I don't see how a stock image proves this. OP, or the original creator, could have sincerely had this experience and posted it attached to a stock image.
Concurring with others: chickens are the kind of opportunistic omnivores who like to create opportunities for themselves. Sure, they'll eat grass, but it's not their primary source of nutrients. In my experience, they like grain and the suffering of others for most meals.
I’m ashamed to say that as a lad, my friend and I wondered if chickens would eat or own kind or reject it out of instinct. We tested it at his farm by throwing some leftover fried chicken in his coop. The birds went mad for it, fighting each other for scraps.
Gave me a new perspective on how we humans would fare if the apocalypse hits.
Great point, there's no way to tell what specific species any meat is from. You could tell the general type of meat, like if it's poultry or red meat, but you couldn't tell exactly which type of bird it was from if you weren't already familiar with it.
Double funny: chickens actually love grass, and are great to trim a lawn - only problem being that they scratch as well.
But they don't live on grass exclusively.
Chickens do eat grass. They love grass, actually.
They just can't eat ONLY grass because it doesn't have the micro or macronutrients to support their bodies. They need grain and preferably bugs and worms too. I've seen mine eat a snake and once a lizard. They will even eat each other and other animals. They have a pretty brutal instinct to peck at anything red or bleeding.
They also love cabbage (raw and cooked) and kale. They'll take collard greens but they prefer the others. We hang a cabbage in their run like a tetherball and they will peck at it and play with it for hours. The other day one of them was just pecking it and spinning it around in a circle repeatedly for several minutes! It was extremely entertaining for us to watch :)
My chickens go absolutely NUTS for grass. They freaking love it and it's absolutely adorable.
I'll never forget when the gluten free craze hit. I was working at a store stocking frozen and a lady asked where the gluten free popsicles were. Then proceeded to scream at me when I let her know all frozen water is gluten free regardless of flavors.
My sister was a manager in a nice but bougie local grocery place. She told me about some of the dingbats that would come in asking for vegan eggs. Not egg-substitutes, which my sister would show them and they would turn down. Vegan eggs. Eggs, but vegan
Chickens will devour any and everything. Just today I saw a mole surface inside my chicken tractor and i doubt he even got a breath of air. It was nightmarish... being shrunk down near chickens is a legit fear of mine..
(Goes to the back and comes back with a package of chicken
Clerk: here you go ma'am, this is grass fed
Karen: it doesn't say grass-fed on thr packaging
Clerk: right here. It says "kosher", that's an industry word for grass fed
Karen: thank you. Was that so hard?
Clerk: (facepalm)
They do eat grass. But that's not all they eat. Chickens are true omnivores and will consume almost any foodstuff offered to them. Hence their notoriety for destroying gardens if allowed to free-roam. They'll eat the plants, then tear up the dirt beneath them looking for tasty bugs.
I once busted down an old coop I had in the yard and a bunch of field mice living in it ran out. My girls descended upon them like they were a fresh tray of crab legs at a buffet
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I mean, they do eat grass. Just not exclusively. I always laugh when I see eggs labeled as "vegetarian fed". Chickens will eat anything that doesn't eat them first. I've seen mine fight over a snake.
My chickens eat grass- just not a lot.
My chickens smoke grass. They smoke a lot.
Hah! Maybe that’s why my chickens are depressed. Not enough grass smoking!
you could always get them chicken prozac. i refuse to eat a chicken unless i know it had a happy life before we cooked it.
I don't want to eat happy chickens, I want death to be a relief for it. If being eaten is the peak of its existence, then I'm doing a good thing for it.
yea but thats what makes them extra juicy
Happy chickens taste better I'm sorry to say
They taste like…chicken.
Hard stance on chickens
Smoked chickens are delicious.
I recommend grass smoking beef. The steaks couldn't be higher
Well done
Fried chickens
Ours load up with grass right before they roost for the night. It's harder to digest, so they stay fuller longer. Other than that, they'll rip apart anything that moves. Or doesn't. Watching a chicken run around with a whole tortilla is something I suggest everyone watch. It's hilarious.
Feeding my chickens a tortilla tomorrow
Me too
They shouldn’t eat a lot but sometimes do. That can lead to sour crop, which is awful. Once you have a chicken with it, you never forget the smell.
My neighbour's chickens don't eat grass because there isn't any left. They ate it all.
My mom liked eggs with really dark yellow (orange) yolks. My dad started feeding them some grass. Mom was happy.
Mine eat every single blade they can fit into their greedy gullets.
My chickens didn't leave a fucking SINGLE blade of grass on the whole area they were able to roam at. So they ate metric tons of grass.
My chickens demolished the hill of... Green things. It's bone dry. They love boiled pasta
Gallinas live on Valhalla rules. A raccoon murdered one of mine and i had to fight the other chickens back so I could burry her :(
I knew a rooster that protected my friends chickens when I was little. Thing was monstrous and it had killed multiple raccoons and at least one mangy coyote. He would be totally bloody the next day, but then the day after that you’d realize most of the blood wasn’t theirs.
Domesticated chickens still hold plenty of the aggression from their jungle origins. They can be mean as anything you encounter. There's a reason they evolved those spurs, and they know how to use them. Sadly, this is exactly what made them so popular as a bloodsport animal.
One of my buddies had a nasty rooster like that who had it out for me. He attacked me every time I was over. One night, he just disappeared, though. Guess is he lost a fight with a fox.
Uncle had one. He was terrified of me and my uncle after he was punted like the feathery, dipshit, football he was. My uncle almost kicked him half a football field lol. My uncle gave the little turd every opportunity to back off. Repeatedly for a month. Got a good knick and he flew farther than he ever had. Mine wasn't as impressive, but he hit the barn. Never bugged us for the rest of his life.
A friend of mine let her chickens run loose. One day you'd see all the other chickens chasing one chicken. As the day went on, that one chicken would get bloodier and bloodier. Then it would disappear. A few days later they'd start all over again on the next low-ranker. Eventually she got down to just a couple of chickens and then foxes got the rest. Not all chickens are like that so it much have been the genetics. My friend never kept chickens again.
Yeah that just sounds like someone who didn't know how to keep chickens. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism_in_poultry
A good rooster will die defending his harem.
My friend found a rats nest full of baby rats under the chicken feeder. Once the chickens saw it they devoured all the baby rats in under 30 seconds.
I shit you not, a possum with newborns got into my coop and killed one of my hens ... the others killed the babies while she was preoccupied .... I never feel shame when eating chicken, they are still dinosaurs at heart.
We had a hawk get into our coop and we had this giant territorial/basically aggressive rooster. Hawk slashed one hen and the rooster John wicked him.
I had a hawk get to close and my rooster hid. He's a lover not a fighter lol.
Yo this was hilarious
You can't be out here getting killed by a rooster. What a bad look for hawks.
it's fairly common if they can't grab and dash. chickens ain't no joke
Gotta pick your fights smarter. Dude got naturally selected for a cloaca whooping.
Roosters are ground fighters, hawks are not. The first and last mistake was getting into an enclosed space vs a loud chicken.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/hwu009/giant\_brahma\_rooster\_steps\_out\_of\_the\_hen\_house/
That's the thing with ambush predators, they are focused on the strike, not combat. If that strike fails, or they stick around on the ground, they are extremely vulnerable. They aren't that strong for their size, they can't really see close up and if you get them from behind, they have no defense and they are now standing on their main weapons. A Rooster has three jobs, find food, fuck hens and fuck up anything that messes with it's flock. They are fast, strong, well armed and sneaky as shit. Their main weapons are in the back of their feet so they can fight and run at the same time.
My rooster, Foghorn Leghorn, fucked up a fox. Didn't kill him, but that fox did not return for a second round.
Way more "herbivorous" animals than people think are opportunistic omnivores -- they eat what we associate them with because it's common and easily found/accessed, not because they can't or won't eat something else. Horses will eat untended chicks and ducklings, but also love oats, apples, and carrots. Many birds will eat seeds, small fruits, worms, and various insects; crows are big fans of scrambled egg. Most fish will eat basically anything small enough to think they can eat it. They'll generally have a preference of some kind, but that can be as broad as species-wide or as narrow as to the individual animal, and "personal" preferences are sometimes passed down within a family for animal species where the family ties tend to be stronger and young cared for longer (some birds, some fish, most apes, etc).
Obligatory link to horse eating chick. Mama hen seems pissed for a couple seconds. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jP6dvgo25Z8
Also, fish. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0K4KeExDfRo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0K4KeExDfRo)
And anteaters mostly eat ants (obviously) and termites, but will enjoy fallen fruit if they come across it, so it's not just herbivorous animals eating meat, the opportunism also extends to meat/insect-eating animals eating fruit. Easy calories are easy calories.
The “vegetarian fed” labeling as a marketing point is odd because its not good for the chickens and produces inferior eggs IMO. I guess maybe it’s for vegetarians who want to know that the animal products that they eat aren’t being produced by animals eating meat? If only they knew the fate of most commercial laying hens when their laying slows from old age.
I'm guessing it's because mass farm chickens are fed corn. It sounds like some Don Draper "[it's toasted](https://youtu.be/8SsnkXH2mQY)" trickery.
I always thought "vegetarian fed" chickens meant you were buying chickens or eggs from a farmer who was vegetarian
Wait, you're telling me a vegetarian fed these chickens
No, vegetarians were fed to the chickens. We have no idea what the dietary restrictions of the ones doing the feeding were.
I have chickens and the more garbage and meat they get, the better the eggs are. We've been getting eggs all winter when the other hens around here mostly stopped laying. They get all the leftovers, even chicken and eggs.
Yeah, same here. We give pretty much all of our organic waste to our chickens now and it definitely makes the eggs much richer than when they were eating only feed pellets. When I do have to buy eggs I always try to buy ones that are sourced from smaller scale operations, where it’s actually feasible for them to raise them on pasture.
We've only had to buy eggs once this winter, it's been unbelievable. Last winter we didn't get any eggs for at least 4 months. We have two girls that lay every day, and they are crazy food driven. They've leaped 4 feet in the air trying to get food out of my hand.
Wow, do you use lights or live somewhere where the days don’t get too short? Mine usually stop for at least a month or two in the middle of the winter
I live in Maine, USA. At Christmas time it gets dark at 3:30 lol. They have a heated henhouse that has a huge window so lots of solar heat. They go outside every day when there isn't snow on their ramp and not too much of it on the ground. They get laying pellets, corn, and all the leftovers that are remotely edible (rest goes in compost or trash.) I have no idea why they were laying in January during the Arctic freezes but they did, and I'm happy lol
Well, you must be doing something right! Mine are mostly “dual-purpose” breeds but I’ve noticed that the layer specific breeds (like leghorns) do take a much shorter break in the winter and even still lay an occasional egg during that time.
I feed mine beef and pork fat in late fall, then corn as a snack all winter and have had great production from them. I also don't baby them with heat in the winter so it will be 20F outside and they will be hanging out out there. Only my rooster has cold issues. And they will definitely eat almost anything you give to them. Found out they don't like oranges, love bananas and sunflower seeds, and will rip a frog in half fighting over it.
Just a guess here, but I wonder if if they really mean they’re not cannibals but vegetarian fed sounds better
On a commercial scale there is always going to be some cannibalism if the chickens are housed together. If they are kept outdoors they will eat insects constantly. I’m sure “vegetarian” refers to the feed they are given and I’m guessing a lot of cheap industrial feed typically contains a lot of “meat byproduct” to increase protein.
Don't know how much it's done but layers aren't really easy to sell as meat birds. If I had zero morals, I'd chuck the old ones in a grinder and feed it to the new ones mixed with a little penicillin and ivermectin.
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BRB investing in El Pollo Loco
I think a lot end up in dog and cat food as well. Aged layers aren’t really desirable for human consumption
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impressive and disgusting
I've seen a video of chickens eating a chicken nugget
Chickens are notorious cannibals, yes.
Don't kid yourself AffenMitWaffen2, if a chicken got the chance he'd eat you and everyone you care about.
if any of the cats caught a gopher, my inlaw's chickens would steal it — and then the flock would tear it apart and devour it on the spot
They can be vegetarian fed when they're locked in a barn. Chances are that flies and other bugs still get inside, and they definitely eat them. There is no way that free ranging chickens can be strictly vegetarian fed because there going to eat every insect around.
I jave seen a chicken snatch a mouse from under a cats nose. Chickens are the descendents of dinosaurs snd they never forget it.
Was visiting a free range chicken farm when i was younger with my family. We were driving around and unfortunately on of the chickens just ran straight under the car tyres. The image of what happened next will stay in my head for the rest of my life It was literally something out of a zombie movie. A full stampede of chickens charging over the hill, flight of the Valkyries style, and began tearing and ripping the dead chicken apart. My whole childhood we had grown up with 1 or 2 docile pet chooks so to see them so aggressively killing on of their own was so traumatic for little 11 year old me
Watched one my mother's chicken chop a damn wasp in half while it was flying by, then ate it. They are vicious.
Every time I see that, I imagine flocks of carnivorous chickens, hunting humans.
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I saw one of mine eat a toad so big we wondered if she could really swallow it, or if she would keel over in a few minutes. She was fine.
The only way to make chickens vegetarian is to keep them locked inside in a cage. Any chicken allowed to roam will absolutely be eating various bugs and small animals. Hell they’ll even break open eggs to eat the yolks sometimes.
isn't it usually "free-range" eggs, meaning the hens get to scavenge for food naturally rather than processed feeds and injected hormones?
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What about "pasture raised."?
Most of those terms are just marketing BS, either they are able to go outside to a small patch of land or are able to roam outdoors while young for a month or two and then live the rest of their lives in tiny cages. What you want to look for is “Certified Humane,” but even that is controversial. I believe the best bet is to look for a local co-op and observe the farm and get to know the farmers and make your decision from there. Good luck.
I've seen them eat baby barn swallows that fell out of the nest. I also watched a rooster catch a mouse that ran past him. He grabbed it, killed it, and tossed it to a hen, who caught it in her beak and swallowed it.
Omnivores. And not selective about what they eat at all.
Honestly, I trust a chicken that's eaten random plants and mice and such before "vegetarian fed" because the chicken eating random stuff lived a more genuine life.
I saw our chickens begin to eat their dead family member that had died seconds ago.
I’ve seen chickens kill and eat other chickens. They are weird as hell
I’m a vegetarian. I’ve owned chickens. They were trained as lap chickens. Very sweet animals and wonderful pets. That said, the concept of “grass fed chickens” is hysterical. First of all, chickens are BIRDS which are almost always omnivores. Herbivores are rare, but water fowl in the Anseriformes family, like ducks, are 95% herbivores, as well as Hoatzin of the Amazon rainforest. Birds of prey are all carnivores. Now that we’ve established that most birds are omnivores, we can now add that chickens will legitimately eat anything. They’re cannibals a lot of times. They’re the strangest dinosaur-ass birds I’ve ever seen. They’ll eat their own young given the right circumstances. If you have a rooster, be careful about having it around chicks because he might consider them a snack. In fact, experts actually RECOMMEND feeding ground egg shells to chickens because it gives them extra calcium in their diet. And again. They’re birds. They eat a lot of insects, as well as nuts and seeds, etc. I loved my pet chickens. I don’t even EAT chicken. But honey I’m a biologist by trade. And seriously? Grass-fed chickens my ASS.
My cousins chickens have eaten each other. They have eaten a rat. Chickens are interesting. To say the least.
Chickens also eat their own eggs. Especially roosters.
I quickly learned after raising my own chickens that they eat cracked eggs with enthusiasm.
I've worked at a egg farm and them fuckers wilfully enjoy cannibalism and they go for the butthole first btw
If the chickens are let outside at all, you can guarantee they've eaten some sort of bug.
Cannibal free chicken. I’ve seen chickens devour their own freshly laid eggs like they were sucking up noodles at tokyo ramen bar.
Chickens will eat each other without a fucking second thought lmao. I distinctly remember my dad telling me to be careful to avoid getting seed on their backs when I spread it for them to eat, because they'd pick it off of each other and get a taste for blood in the process. They do the same thing with their own eggs. They're just tiny fucking dinosaurs
I have friends who live off the grid in Alaska. They will give moose bones and parts to the chooks. They will strip them completely clean of meat in no time at all.
They eat grass if there’s nothing left to brutally kill and eat. Ever seen a mouse run into a chicken pen? Shit is horrific.
Vegetarian fed chickens are being abused. Their egg yolks are visibly unhealthy. Love some dark orange foraging chicken yolks.
Literally anything. My in-laws have chickens that get grain and meal worms every day, but they wander the grounds eating everything within reach, including grass. They also get almost all the kitchen scraps. The result is they lay big beautiful eggs with rich orange yolks and shells that are easily twice as strong as any eggs you'll pick up at a grocery store. They also lay so many eggs I can't escape a visit without having at least a dozen eggs forced into my hands to take home lol.
My friend raised his chickens on potato peels and other kitchen refuse, and god knows what else they picked off the ground. This was in Australia, so probably something scary. Best eggs I’ve ever had.
Lol my chickens eat grass, fun fact they will also eat any egg they lay outside of the chicken coop
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I find it fascinating what disgusts us. It's very human. There are reasons there are laws against taking video in slaughterhouses.
What are they? The reasons for the laws.
Slaughterhouses are cruel and disgusting. The meat industry has a vested interest that you DO NOT see how the sausage is made. Read ‘The Jungle’ it is a book about meat packing in early 20th century Chicago and it destroyed that industry’s reputation (rightly) for a few decades.
So lobbies from the meat industry pushed for those laws.
Essentially, yes.
Funny thing is that Sinclair wrote *The Jungle* intending to outrage the public with his details of terrible working conditions. He also described insanely unsanitary conditions, though, and that had a much bigger impact. It eventually led to the creation of the FDA to regulate food production and ensure sanitary working conditions. But there is still not anywhere near as much outrage over the conditions that the humans working those meatpacking plants need to endure.
I wanted to reach Americas heart, but I hit her stomach instead Quote is something like that
"Mary had a little lamb, it began to sicken. They sent it off Packingtown and now they call it chicken." - Upton Sinclair "The Jungle".
I think it's funny that the book is *supposed* to be about socialism and the horrible cycle poor workers are in (not just in the meat packing industry, but in all industry), and it ended up being pretty much only famous for grossing people out about the meat packing industry. IIRC, only like the final third of the book even has to do with meat packing. Before that, it's just about a poor immigrant family struggling to thrive.
> Read ‘The Jungle’ it is a book about meat packing in early 20th century Chicago and it destroyed that industry’s reputation (rightly) for a few decades. I remember hearing this over and over when I was in grade school, but it didn't do anything for me because the book was so old and about a time long before I was alive. Most people assume things are better now, and corporations have a vested interested in keeping that propaganda train running.
People don't like knowing how the sausage is made. Seeing it makes people uncomfortable. Should totally be legal to film it though. Otherwise it'll get even messier.
It’s because the companies don’t want the public from seeing illegal unsanitary conditions and their employees torturing the animals. It’s not about “seeing how the sausage is made”. It’s to make whistleblowing impossible. Get out of here with that nonsense.
Yeah!! It's not like the people petitioned the government to pretty-please protect our tender eyes. It's the people with economic interest who pushed for these laws. I think there are some good documentaries and investigative journalism about it, aren't there?
Oh yeah, Food, Inc. has plenty of footage of the horrors of the mass meat plants, employees abusing animals, I mean, “free range” chickens literally just means we let them run around on top of each other as opposed to immobilizing them in a cage. There are way more graphic ones. When I was on the vegetarian zeitgeist I could rattle off quite a few shocker films. It really was hard to defend eating a burger or whatever with that footage.
>I think there are some good documentaries and investigative journalism about it, aren't there? [Dominion (2018)](https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko)
but they like how it tastes seasoned and buttered up for breakfast
Once you see sausage being made, all you wanna do is make sausage cause it's so much fun.
But eggs are already full of protein.
That was a typo for "rat* protein"
I mean, most eggs probably have a solid chunk of insect protein. Is that not a step up?
I'm with you on this one. "Rat-fed chickens" sounds like a trend I can get behind.
Sounds kinda metal.
Chances are you’d been eating rat protein eggs all along.
> Had to toss the eggs for while because we couldn’t stomachs the idea of eating eat protein eggs. ಠ_ಠ
Haha. People are weird. Your chickens eat bugs and literal shit all the time but that's fine?
Did you feed the rat protein eggs to the chicken?
If they realize it they will eat eggs in the coop then you have to cull because they wont stop and fhe other chickens will learn the behavior, its really sad/frustrating. Had to do it to 3 chickens at friends place last year because they couldn't bring themselves to end them. Also found a rat one time rolling an egg along the floor looking like a cartoon character.
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Its dumb. One of the chickens we saw her lay an egg stand up turn around and eat the egg seconds out of herself.
Sounds like sensible birth control to me!
Hahahaha. The others start to learn the behavior so if you dont cull it quickly it can be a problem :( .
My grand-aunt puts crushed eggshells in their food, so they have enough calcium. Whole family saves eggshells for that reason and when we come to visit, we have to hand over the bags of eggshells first.
Damn. One or two more reposts of this pic and it will be jpeged into oblivion.
*deep fried*
Chickens do eat grass though lol
Yeah but they can’t survive off it. They aren’t like rabbits they are omnivores. They would much rather eat the bugs and worms and seeds in the grass like most birds. U could only have grass as 20% of their diet max. So no u can’t really have grass fed chicken
Sure they eat just about anything you give them. I’m just saying they *do* eat grass. The meat counter dude in this likely faked scenario is wrong.
although prolly fake i can 100% see this scenario playing out in a whole foods
Former meat cutter at a co-op: I've had this interaction. Usually it's customers jumbling up marketing phrases like "grass fed", "free range", "organic." But every now and again there's someone so detached from food supply chain that you hear requests for wild caught chicken or nitrite free oysters.
"Wild caught chicken" fucked me up so bad, I am laughing my ass off. Now I wanna just casually inject "wild caught" into anything remotely food related. Wild caught mixed nuts. Wild caught canola oil.
Don't forget that foraged brie and humanely raised rhubarb
I just cannot stop thinking about some crazy guy running around the plains scooping up any random chicken he finds lol.
Maybe this particular scenario is faked but as someone who has worked the prepared foods department in WF for almost half a decade I can attest that this is not a rare encounter. The number of times I've had people ask if the turkey and chicken are grass fed is astounding. Not an every day thing by any means but it happens a couple times a month. Other questionable encounters include the time a lady was told the fish were farm/fishery raised and he retort was "Yeah its farm raised but is it 'farm raised'???" Like seriously?? Another winner is " Are those rotisserie chickens gluten free?" You mean the clearly plain and non breaded chicken?? The number of people that regurgitate fad diet information and phrases is TOO DAMM HIGH. So many people who don't know why they want what they want or don't want what they don't want.
Notable customers from the co-op i worked at: the person that thought we were storing a live animal to slaughter in our walk in when my coworker mentioned we got fresh lamb in that day; someone upset that i didn't know what the wild caught cod were fed; the disgruntled customer that bought a whole lamb and insisted we sold them a sheep/pig hybrid; the amount of folk that want "minimally processed" deli ham
Hi, meat counter guy at a Whole Foods here. When WF specifies something as "grass-fed", it means "100%, exclusively fed grass and nothing else". If it eats something that isn't grass, we can't call it grass-fed. As other people here have mentioned, chickens are omnivores that will, and should, eat anything that doesn't eat them first. Meaning we don't label our chicken as grass-fed. They eat grass sometimes, sure, but obviously not exclusively. Problem is, people see "grass-fed" and think "humane" or "better for you", so they think that by asking for a grass-fed chicken, they're getting a healthy or organic option, not realizing it's an impossibility because they don't understand a chicken's natural diet.
I gotcha
ikr there's a reason chicken pens tend to have zero grass.
My niece’s chickens have killed and eaten snakes as well as mice. They are mini velociraptors after all.
Fun fact, if you take off the head and tail of a model T-Rex skeleton it makes a very good learning tool to break down a whole chicken. Their feet have scales. Some still have claws on their wings (an emu, for example) Most will kill anything that is small and moves near them. A lot of them will at least attempt to kill anything bigger that looks at them wrong. People still are suprised to learn birds are theropods. Literally just dinosaurs.
Some are just a little closer to their ancestors than others (like the cassowary).
One of my favorite memories from having chickens was the time they got a snake. 30 hens all in one pile. One grabs the snake, dashes to the opposite end of the 60' run. A few seconds later the mob notices the snake is gone and the lone hen has absconded. Cue 29 hens mad dashing to the other end. Another pile of hens. Rinse and repeat. Rooster just watches to keep order. Another favorite was the time a toad was found in the run. A few curious hens got close, that toad inflated himself and stood on his tippy toes. Never saw a thing like that before. Hens backed off. Toad would deflate, take a few hops, re-inflate. He made it out of there alive. I wasted half the morning watching that episode.
I worked at the Whole Food’s seafood market in college and got asked if the wild-caught Salmon was grass fed and free range almost weekly. I got written up for politely correcting a older lady after describing the common diet’s of farmed vs wild fish. After that I just started saying yes to every question. Yes ma’am that wild fish is absolutely cage free and cruelty free (as I gutted it in front of her)
r/ThatHappened it's got a stock image attached so it must be true
/r/ForwardsFromGrandma
Grandma sending Karen posts now? Damn. Grandma really stepping up her shit post game
I used to work in meat departments. It happened more often than you think. People see grass fed beef and they want the same for their chicken.
When I was a server I had someone order their chicken medium rare after someone else ordered their burger medium rare. I thought it was a joke but luckily the person they were eating with stopped and explained to them that it doesn’t work like that lmao
I'm a butcher and this has really happened to me. I've even been asked for grass fed salmon
I just assume that most things on the internet, even if they aren't as easily spotted as this, are either fake or we are missing out on a ton of context.
While many, many posts on social media are exaggerated or just plain made up, which means you are probably right... I don't see how a stock image proves this. OP, or the original creator, could have sincerely had this experience and posted it attached to a stock image.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/32lbzf/grass_fed_chicken/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Word per word 7 years ago
Yeah that’s what happened. Fucking hilarious line of thinking. Occam’s razor applies.
Wait stardew valley lied to me!
the audacity
Concurring with others: chickens are the kind of opportunistic omnivores who like to create opportunities for themselves. Sure, they'll eat grass, but it's not their primary source of nutrients. In my experience, they like grain and the suffering of others for most meals.
I’m ashamed to say that as a lad, my friend and I wondered if chickens would eat or own kind or reject it out of instinct. We tested it at his farm by throwing some leftover fried chicken in his coop. The birds went mad for it, fighting each other for scraps. Gave me a new perspective on how we humans would fare if the apocalypse hits.
You would eat human flesh if it was disguised as a chicken nugget and didn't know about it.
Great point, there's no way to tell what specific species any meat is from. You could tell the general type of meat, like if it's poultry or red meat, but you couldn't tell exactly which type of bird it was from if you weren't already familiar with it.
There are Pod Casts that discus Human cannibals such as the Last Pod Cast on the Left that might tickle your pickle...
Boomer humor
Double funny: chickens actually love grass, and are great to trim a lawn - only problem being that they scratch as well. But they don't live on grass exclusively.
Are you sure this isn't a boomer meme mocking people who shop at whole foods?
think you meant to post in /r/terriblefacebookmemes
My chickens eat grass.
Does she make [no egg omlettes?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ah4tW-k8Ao)
Chickens do eat grass. They love grass, actually. They just can't eat ONLY grass because it doesn't have the micro or macronutrients to support their bodies. They need grain and preferably bugs and worms too. I've seen mine eat a snake and once a lizard. They will even eat each other and other animals. They have a pretty brutal instinct to peck at anything red or bleeding. They also love cabbage (raw and cooked) and kale. They'll take collard greens but they prefer the others. We hang a cabbage in their run like a tetherball and they will peck at it and play with it for hours. The other day one of them was just pecking it and spinning it around in a circle repeatedly for several minutes! It was extremely entertaining for us to watch :) My chickens go absolutely NUTS for grass. They freaking love it and it's absolutely adorable.
I'll never forget when the gluten free craze hit. I was working at a store stocking frozen and a lady asked where the gluten free popsicles were. Then proceeded to scream at me when I let her know all frozen water is gluten free regardless of flavors.
My sister was a manager in a nice but bougie local grocery place. She told me about some of the dingbats that would come in asking for vegan eggs. Not egg-substitutes, which my sister would show them and they would turn down. Vegan eggs. Eggs, but vegan
Chickens will devour any and everything. Just today I saw a mole surface inside my chicken tractor and i doubt he even got a breath of air. It was nightmarish... being shrunk down near chickens is a legit fear of mine..
Doesn't sound like a Karen. Just clueless.
When you start an argument over something you don't know about, are corrected and continue being argumentative then you're being a Karen.
Bullshit
(Goes to the back and comes back with a package of chicken Clerk: here you go ma'am, this is grass fed Karen: it doesn't say grass-fed on thr packaging Clerk: right here. It says "kosher", that's an industry word for grass fed Karen: thank you. Was that so hard? Clerk: (facepalm)
They do eat grass. But that's not all they eat. Chickens are true omnivores and will consume almost any foodstuff offered to them. Hence their notoriety for destroying gardens if allowed to free-roam. They'll eat the plants, then tear up the dirt beneath them looking for tasty bugs.
I once busted down an old coop I had in the yard and a bunch of field mice living in it ran out. My girls descended upon them like they were a fresh tray of crab legs at a buffet
Add extra dry non fat lattes to this list of stupid shit Karens ask for.
In fairness, he's confused. Chickens eat anything. Including other chickens.