• qyron@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    As someone who raised chickens: they could care more about family ties.

    Of course there will be differences between breeds and individuals but some things I witnessed:

    • roosters, brothers by blood, fighting to the death
    • chickens stealing eggs from each other
    • chickens eating their own eggs (animals with good feed, grass and oister shells to peck on, fully available)
    • younger chickens ganging up on the matriarch
    • chickens killing their own chicks with no need to worry for lack of resources

    Chickens are not gentle. In great enough numbers, chickens will even attack their predator. The birds can evaluate risk/success odds.

    Again, there are more tame breeds and less tame ones. Some are the spawn of the deep pits where nightmares fester and grow.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Far to many people that have no experience with animals give them human thoughts and competency.

      • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Anthropomorphism.

        That’s a mouth full.

        Sometimes it seems we are too evolved for our own good but I like to think this tendency of ours will lead to a greater good.

      • credit crazy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That theory goes out the window when you have a city sliker meet a farm animal in person. One of my favorite childhood pass times was seeing city blokes cower in fear of petting a chicken or goat especially when that same person has pictures of chickens in their home because they are cute

        • Misconduct@startrek.website
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          1 year ago

          That’s just a whole lot of confirmation bias speaking. Most people are gonna hesitate when they encounter totally new things that’s not unique to people from any type of place.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The goat I understand. Those fuckers are mean, and they bite. Who TF is afraid of a chicken? Turkey, sure. Again, they are mean and big enough to fight back. The chickens found out that they “can” become soccer balls if they piss off the ape that is bringing them food.

          • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Who TF is afraid of a chicken?

            Have you not met any chickens? They can be downright NASTY. And a lot of people don’t have it in them to kick a chicken.

            • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I lived on a farm as a kid and had to kick them out of the way to feed the little fuckers. They aren’t scary, but yeah they are ill-tempered and nasty, if you don’t out mass them by several times their mass. Kicking in this sense is more like shoving them with your foot, unless one of the fuckers bites, then they get a more forceful shove, that causes them to use their wings since they go a few inches off the ground.

              • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                Well yeah. I think scary is subjective on that sense. I have a big dog who used to be fear aggressive toward me and he didn’t scare me (even though I knew he could kill me if he tried). It’s about how comfortable we are in a situation, I suppose. My wife got attacked by coyotes once, so she’s more cautious around them than any of our neighbors.

          • credit crazy@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You’d be surprised by how many blokes are afraid of the adorable little balls of feathers that are always running away from them

    • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’ve got a mug from a town I used to live in. It’s a rooster with the name “Shitty Larry” written across it. He was a local celeb. A rooster so badly behaved he had to be rehomed, and the people who adopted him created a whole lifestyle around dealing with his “antics”.

      As I was leaving, Fucking Frank was also coming into the spotlight.

      They’re assholes. But they taste good.

      • Xilly@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My grandmother raised chickens and there was rooster that used to harass my mother and her siblings and they hated the rooster. Apparently one day the rooster pecked at my grandmother’s leg and then they had rooster stew for dinner. Point of the story is that roosters are assholes.

        • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          I live in a largely portuguese area, but there are definitely “cousin” dishes to Coq au Vin, chicken and chourico (or linguica) stews with a dash of saffron or paprika, some good portuguese wine. Deliciuos.

            • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Minus the Parsley, I’d swear I have had similar.

              Well that, and we never cook with Port around here, it’s always dry wine or Madeira. Madeira is a much sweeter Port, which totally changes the flavor. I’ll show this particular recipe to my wife and get her take.

              I wonder, is this a mainland recipe maybe? Everyone around here is Azorean, which can slightly tweak the common ingredients. I watched a Bifana video last summer where the guy used CHEESE and it made everyone I know swear at him. You don’t use Cheese in anything portuguese around here except Cheese Rolls.

              • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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                1 year ago

                Madeira is much more dry than Port wine. The soil of the island and the salty breeze are enough to change the nature of the wine at the grape level; plus, it’s a fortified wine. Good Madeira should end on a slightly bitter, somewhat acidic note.

                Port wine grows inland, on hills, where a river cuts across deep valeys. Any Port is sweet by nature, very round on the mouth, with wood and berry notes. The whites tend to be slightly more dry, with a somewhat citrus or flower note, but nonetheless sweet.

                You can cook with these wines, especially if you want to flex a bit and add a few dimensions to the end result but plain wine os more than enough; Portugal was always essentially a poor country. Wine was prolific but fine wines like Port amd Madeira were luxury items and most of our traditional cuisine was born in farm kitchens, where food needed to be plentiful and tasteful, to help push away a hard day of labor.

                Drowning meat in wine is almost standard fare. One especially traditional rabbit stew involves drowning the meat in red wine, over night, with garlic, onions and bay leaves, seasoned with some salt and pepper, and the next day cook it very slowly in a clay pot in the hoven. After a few hours, the meat should peel of the bone. Try it, if you can.

                And cheese usually is not part of the main dish, unless you’re serving francesinha or some preparation of hoven baked cod, where you may grate some island cheese on top for salt and the bitterness of it.

                Bifana with cheese. That’s criminal.

                • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Madeira is much more dry than Port wine. The soil of the island and the salty breeze are enough to change the nature of the wine at the grape level; plus, it’s a fortified wine. Good Madeira should end on a slightly bitter, somewhat acidic note.

                  I’ve heard of dry Madeiera, but I’ve never tried it. Acidic, yes. Local Madeiras are very sweet around here. The most popular brand of Madeira in my area is effectively reduced grape juice mixed with Brandy. Sickeningly, coyingly sweet. My area perhaps the largest Portuguese Festival in the world (Feast of the Blessed Sacrament) is drink-sponsored by Justino’s Madeira, and it’s like drinking alcoholic maple syrup. It’s freaking delicious, for all of 2 oz pour and then it gets hard to finish :) The local Madeira’s have raisin or prune notes.

                  Now Port. We’ve got Sandalman and Pacheca. That can get fairly heavy, in either sweet or dry direction. I haven’t had a bone dry port, but I’m told they exist. I always have a bottle of Port in the house. Not so much Madeira. Special occasions only (not the price, it’s cheap. The extreme sweetness).

                  You can cook with these wines, especially if you want to flex a bit and add a few dimensions to the end result but plain wine os more than enough

                  I like the one-two punch of Sherry and Brandy much of the time. However, my wife and her family always uses a good Vinho Verde for her dishes. Cacoila is one of the local staples, and it’s basically pork left to soak in wine forever with a few secret ingredients (usually at least some some paprika)

                  One especially traditional rabbit stew involves drowning the meat in red wine, over night, with garlic, onions and bay leaves, seasoned with some salt and pepper, and the next day cook it very slowly in a clay pot in the hoven

                  OMG… I had that once at one of the local places (Captain’s place, since I’ve already doxed myself regarding the Festa). It was incredible. Rabbit isn’t common here, so it was a special. I’ve never seen it since :(

                  And cheese usually is not part of the main dish, unless you’re serving francesinha or some preparation of hoven baked cod, where you may grate some island cheese on top for salt and the bitterness of it.

                  francesinha looks incredible. I’ve never seen it around here. I’m guessing it’s a mainland dish? We have Sao Jorge cheese around here, but we only eat it straight. Also, nobody around here puts cheese with Cod, but baccalhau is often made with milk, so it’s not a huge stretch to me.

    • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We had chickens when I was a teen. They regularily hunted, killed and ate small rodents, lizards/snakes and sometimes even small birds like young sparrows whenever they could catch them - everything that fits into a chicken’s beak is fair game. And it wasn’t exactly a pretty sight. Imagine a single panicked field mouse being chased by sixteen feathered mini velociraptors, all trying to kill the mouse first, and then all fighting each other FOR the (hopefully) dead prey, as noone ever wanted to share their kill.

      Funnily enough, the rooster was was a cuddly little idiot. (he got beaten up by the hens occasionally)

      And just t add some proof for some of the points above, here’s a video of a single hen killing a hawk (warning, it is kinda graphic). They don’t even need great numbers to shred their wannabe predators - one really p*ssed off chicken and an opportunity to strike back, that’s all it takes.

      • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t witness it but there are a few chicken farms around the area - the kind where chickens can freely roam around a huge shed - and I was told from an acquaintace that works at one they had been on the lookout for foxes, as they had already destroyed a few coops around the farm.

        One morning they arrive at the barn to find a few dead chickens and two foxes partially skeletonized on the floor. It was a gruesome sight and the recording from the security cameras showed the foxes had been completely overrun by a mob of angry chickens that pecked, kicked and essentially killed by the thousand cuts method the poor wannabe predators.

        The few chickens the foxes managed to kill were not enough to deter the mob but instead served to further spur it into a killer frenzy.

        Because foxes are a protectes species, they had to call the authorities to give notice and have the cadavers picked up. Even the municipal vet was horrified at the state the chickens had left the foxes.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      i’ve heard chickens will just casually peck others to death if they have a wound too, like it’s not even malice or removing competition, they just do it from some fucked up instinct.

      • Number1SummerJam@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I own chickens and have had a bullying problem in the past. In the winter they have a lot less space and they get bored and stressed easily. The hen that took the “rooster”/protector role started pecking the smallest and sweetest chicken and drew blood. I had to keep the small chicken isolated from the flock for a few weeks while its wounds healed and put special goggles on the bully chicken for a month- they prevent it from seeing in front of itself so it forgets what’s there after a few seconds. Yeah they can be vicious, but it’s definitely preventable if they’re raised right instead of at a factory farm.

      • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I once read about a turkey that had to be wraped in a tea towel to allow a wound to heal as the creature kept pecking at it and ripping out pieces of flesh that would glady eat.

        That is pretty high on the extreme behavior list. And I think it was a pet turkey.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The only one I’m having trouble thinking of an example is the chicks rising up against the matriarch, but that’s simply because I cannot think of an example of a matriarch in The Bible. The rest are covered in the Old Testament, possibly even The Torah.

        The Torah and Bible are actually based on stories derived from watching chicken society fail to develop? This is my new headcanon

    • TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      they could care more about family ties.

      ugh, the consequences of internet grammarian fascism: people using normative language to make a quirky riff on a nonsense “rule”

    • Number1SummerJam@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They’re intelligent and very instinctive birds from birth- that doesn’t mean that they’re vicious though. My chickens that I’m raising are all sweethearts. It’s all a matter of their environment. If you overcrowd them in an indoor factory farm of course they’re going to turn on each other, they’re extremely stressed out. Chickens that are raised outdoors with lots of space and different kinds of food are a lot less likely to act up and turn on each other. You can even taste a noticeable difference in eggs from happy chickens.

      Roosters on the other hand are usually fucking assholes.

      • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I had about a dozen chickens in an outdoors coop, with plenty of space (about 32 cubic metres of tridimensional space) and often carried them around in a chicken tractor (birds of prey area where I live) for grazing and some individuals exihibited extreme behaviors.

        Again, variations will occur from breed to breed and from individual to individual.

        Some breeds are especially known for being tamer than others and more concerned with eggs and brood than others.

        I’ll partially agree on your statement that all roosters are assholes: we had one that enjoyed crowing when we were trying to talk anywhere in the bird’s line of sight.