Comic Strips

As others have already said, chickens do not discriminate when it comes to eating. They're savage.

If a chicken gets injured, you have to (usually) isolate it. Not because of infection risk, but because the others will peck and eat them down to bone. There's folks that have had it turn into a mini apocalypse. One bird gets hurt, gets pecked, and the squabbles cause injury to another one, and then everyone in the flock is at it.

There's one of the YouTube "homestead" people that lost something like a dozen hens because one of them was plucking feathers until the others were bleeding, and it spread.

Unlike a lot of livestock, chickens can actually eat chicken safely. It doesn't do them any harm. To the contrary, it's a good food for them overall, it just can't be their main food.

My little hen has grabbed chicken that fell on the floor before and gone to town on it. Then begged for more.

Hens eating eggs is also fairly common. Their own, other chickens' eggs, whatever. Roosters won't always eat egg, but hens will eat the shells in specific like it's going out of style. Can't recommend letting them eat the innards of the egg though. It comes out the other end eventually, and the smell is horrid.

The calcium of the shells is good for them.

Chickens are pretty damm cool tbh. When we got our first one, I hadn't been around any since I was a kid at my uncle's farm, and those were working hens. As pets, they're sometimes difficult, but very rewarding. I was just snuggling our rooster about a half hour ago.

Big old guy; without his feathers he'd be basketball size. With them, he's a beast. But come his bedtime, he gets to relax instead of having to be on swivel constantly. So I'll sit with him in my chair on the back porch, scratching under his neck feathers and petting him while he's nestled under my arm. Tonight, he was melting. Got so relaxed he was almost sliding off my lap.

The pet hen is sitting on my wife's leg right now, kinda purring as she naps. She'll come over to me later and get snuggled in under my arm until her bedtime. If she goes in too early, she gets mad and wants back on the couch with me, so she gets to stay out longer lol.