What about chickens?

[Ophidia]

Re: What about chickens?

Chicken stoopidity is a good question. It varies between breeds.

"Meat birds" are specifically bred to be eating machines. Eat and poop is about the extent of their smarts. In fact, they eat and grow so fast that they will commonly have broken legs because they get fat & heavy faster than their legs grow to support them. If you've ever bought a package of chicken legs, you may have noticed that some are broken. This is why.

These birds are very uninteresting because they have little behavior that even seems natural. They are also (IMHO) just gross.

The older breeds, which were common when people kept chickens in their yards and allowed then to largely free range, like Rhode Island Reds, are much brighter, as farm fowl go, and more entertaining to watch, or as pets.

Fancy chickens (show birds) vary...

I was just going to add that it probably depends on the variety of chicken.

My aunt kept yard chickens. She & my uncle had a big yard, too - coupla acres, with a pecan grove on one side & old woods on another. My aunt would regularly clip her chickens' wings because they would get into the pecan grove, & once that happened they were almost impossible to retrieve.

Hens can fight. They can be pretty damned ornery when they want to be. A couple of the hens my aunt had also had spurs, and would not hesitate to use them - which was something I learned the hard way. Her rooster & a couple of hens went after a small fox one night & there was fox hair & blood spread all over the place - the hen it had attacked lost a wing, but that was it.

Chickens aren't just omnivores, they are opportunists, and will eat each other while they are still alive.

I don't think the big-breasted industrial chicken would fare well in the wild, but yard chickens & heritage breeds? They'd probably do just fine.

[Roknrol]

Re: What about chickens?

Seems sort of horrid to take everything a creature produces and then kill it when it stops producing.

Huh...sounds kinda like being a human.

[Girlgoyle]

Re: What about chickens?

You'd probably see plenty of wild chickens. They're not the smartest of creatures so, like any other species of bird, would thrive in Chicken friendly environments and die out in areas not ideal for their species...except for the ones that find their way to B de Corbin's to retire...they'd be fine.

[ChainLightning]

Re: What about chickens?

I get so tickled by the stooopid chicken reference. Just call me a curmudgeon. Even the dumbest chicken, I'd say, could be proven smarter, by a large measure, than some 'fully' autonomous humans.

Would chickens survive, if we just suddenly upped and quit eating them? Depends on whether we kept feeding them and providing shelter.

Would chickens survive the extinction of humans? Setting aside what would cause humans to go bye-bye, but not chickens, I think it's fair to say that some would evolve, some wouldn't *have* to evolve and most would die.



That's true of all domesticated animals, I think. There's great evidence of wild once-captive animals actually performing well in their adopted environs. Some too well. But if humans are gone, humans won't be tampering with the ecosystems any more, such that food chains will be able to readjust, to accommodate newcomers. Or, the newcomers will pull a human stunt and destroy it's environment. Or, they'll fail miserably and simply feed an explosive scavenger population. It all depends whether there's a niche they can fill, or not.

[Amadi]

Re: What about chickens?

My Neighbour keeps chickens as pets (retired), they're actually quite cute, inexpensive and low maintenance, plus free eggs (sometimes) =3

[loststarshine]

Re: What about chickens?

Wow fasinating thread. The science of dogs was very intrusting. I wonder about toy breed dogs like the "teacup" breeds.

[nbdy]

Re: What about chickens?

Wow fasinating thread. The science of dogs was very intrusting. I wonder about toy breed dogs like the "teacup" breeds.

I don't thing any groomed dogs would make it. The little shihtzu we kept for a while could not poop unless her butt hair was kept trimmed back. I also know some one with a pekingnese who has to take the dog to have its anus milked. There is some technical and polite way of putting it, but even with its butt shaved it still needs help to get the poop out. These dogs are goners without solicitous humans in the picture.

[loststarshine]

Re: What about chickens?

I don't thing any groomed dogs would make it. The little shihtzu we kept for a while could not poop unless her butt hair was kept trimmed back. I also know some one with a pekingnese who has to take the dog to have its anus milked. Oh There is some technical and polite way of putting it, but even with its butt shaved it still needs help to get the poop out. These dogs are goners without solicitous humans in the picture.

Oh ya i forgot about that gland i been couldnt they scoot their butt on the floor and eventual pop it

[nbdy]

Re: What about chickens?

Oh ya i forgot about that gland i been couldnt they scoot their butt on the floor and eventual pop it

Not with all that hair, apparently.

[Rae'ya]

Re: What about chickens?

Anal glands are completely unrelated to hair. And the reason that some small dogs can't defecate properly if not kept shaved is because they are on unbalanced diets of tinned food, scraps and 'homecooked diets' which means that they have soft stools, which then gets stuck in the hair and dries into a dag, which creates a painful barrier to defecating. So they hold it and get constipated. Unbalanced diets are also the culprit for anal glands that don't express properly 90% of the time, though genetic anatomy certainly plays a part.

[ChainLightning]

Re: What about chickens?

Table scraps. My mother refuses to accept that 'people food' is bad for her dog. Not by being fattening, unbalanced, hard on the digestive system, none of it. Moderation, apparantly, is supposed to make up for the disgusting shit they put in people food.

A more sophisticated form of animal abuse, imo.

[Ophidia]

Re: What about chickens?

Table scraps. My mother refuses to accept that 'people food' is bad for her dog. Not by being fattening, unbalanced, hard on the digestive system, none of it. Moderation, apparantly, is supposed to make up for the disgusting shit they put in people food.

A more sophisticated form of animal abuse, imo.

It really depends on the quality of 'people food' that you're feeding your dog.

Lean steak, chicken or well-done salmon, fresh roasted sweet potatoes, corn on the cob... Some apple, strawberries or watermelon slices... that's good food for anyone. The hubs & I eat green veggies, too, but they make the dog puke. So no sauteed green beans or broccoli for her.

7 years of a blend of people food & dog food and she's never had an anal gland problem at all. Commercial dog food has only been around for about 150 years - and yes, pet dogs have changed somewhat in that time period, but not so much that they can't digest 'people food'. The first canned dog food was just horse meat. It wasn't until the late 50s, early 60s that pet food marketing began trying to get everyone to stop feeding their dogs whatever & only feed them processed pet foods - mainly with warnings about 'the dangers of table scraps'.

[nbdy]

Re: What about chickens?

Anal glands are completely unrelated to hair. And the reason that some small dogs can't defecate properly if not kept shaved is because they are on unbalanced diets of tinned food, scraps and 'homecooked diets' which means that they have soft stools, which then gets stuck in the hair and dries into a dag, which creates a painful barrier to defecating. So they hold it and get constipated. Unbalanced diets are also the culprit for anal glands that don't express properly 90% of the time, though genetic anatomy certainly plays a part.

I don't know much about the pekingnese and her anal glands, but matted hair was the deal with the shihtzu. She was on a vet's diet, so it wasn't because of table food. No big deal, I just kept her groomed. But the point is that if these dogs were foraging in the wild there are nearly impossible odds of producing stools of appropriate consistency every day. I just don't think they'd make it without people; they have been bred into dependency.

[ChainLightning]

Re: What about chickens?

It really depends on the quality of 'people food' that you're feeding your dog.

Lean steak, chicken or well-done salmon, fresh roasted sweet potatoes, corn on the cob... Some apple, strawberries or watermelon slices... that's good food for anyone. The hubs & I eat green veggies, too, but they make the dog puke. So no sauteed green beans or broccoli for her.

7 years of a blend of people food & dog food and she's never had an anal gland problem at all. Commercial dog food has only been around for about 150 years - and yes, pet dogs have changed somewhat in that time period, but not so much that they can't digest 'people food'. The first canned dog food was just horse meat. It wasn't until the late 50s, early 60s that pet food marketing began trying to get everyone to stop feeding their dogs whatever & only feed them processed pet foods - mainly with warnings about 'the dangers of table scraps'.

I'm sorry, hon'. I was probably way too general in my comments there. I agree that there are a great many so-called "people foods" that actually are good for dogs and people alike. As you said, people food has been around a lot longer than commercial dog foods. And healthy food has been around a lot longer than many of the current processed shit, like trans fat-laden MSG piles.

It's those latter unhealthy people foods that I was referring to. A case of "eyes being bigger than the stomach", and after going back for seconds, there was a large amount of food left on her plate. About a quarter of a plateful of some home style mac 'n 3 cheese bake, with a sizable remainder of a grilled [4 slices of lunchmeat] ham sandwich - with lettuce, tomato and cheese, heavy on the mayo - and almost half a cupcake, for dessert. It's not exactly a healthy meal for people (fats and calories, especially). For a little dog? Yikes.

[Ophidia]

Re: What about chickens?

It's those latter unhealthy people foods that I was referring to. A case of "eyes being bigger than the stomach", and after going back for seconds, there was a large amount of food left on her plate. About a quarter of a plateful of some home style mac 'n 3 cheese bake, with a sizable remainder of a grilled [4 slices of lunchmeat] ham sandwich - with lettuce, tomato and cheese, heavy on the mayo - and almost half a cupcake, for dessert. It's not exactly a healthy meal for people (fats and calories, especially). For a little dog? Yikes.

Even for me, that's a lot of food. Holy cow!