Farm Update: Crazy Hollowed Chicken Mystery Solved!

I'll admit I've been avoiding this one...just because its so fucking crazy. It's so crazy, I gotta swear about it. As the hot weather set in we started having a weird chicken issue. Once a day we'd go out to our unique chicken area, that is the chickens that aren't white, to find one of the chickens completely hollowed out, guts gone but the bird left.

Sorry for the graphic photos, but I know this has been so crazy that I have to. So we'd find a bird, usually a docile breed like this black and white one, out there. Sometimes there'd be ants but often not which we found strange, but we just had no idea what was going on.

One day while John was feeding them, he saw it happen first hand. It was cannibalism. They were eating each other through the ass, intestines and all to leave the body to rot. The chicken he rescued was still alive, with half of it's organs missing. We took to the internet and found that this is actually the one of the most common issues among all chicken farmers, including free range.

We took extra lengths for about a week to make sure it wasn't diet related, leaving so much food for them that it was rotting on the ground. The problem resurfaced again one rainy morning and it seemed flockwide. These birds were killed because they were cannibals. It's a genetic trait that is also a social trait, so once it's started it's an issue until all the cannibals are removed. We spent about an hour watching them and killing them as they tried to eat their friends. Finally, it was down to 3 brown birds, one of which played dead and literally showed no interest in the cannabalistic tendancies. I took that one inside, where it's been cuddling with a friend wounded from cannibalism a few days prior. We caught it at just a bad wing wound, so it'll be fine. The other two seemed to decide against cannibalism and there hasn't been an issue since.

We have all sorts of breeds here both fighting and birds for food and eggs. Often times these genetics get mixed and the worst traits carry over. Whatever it was, it probably started with one or two chickens, with the rest of the flock to follow. It hasn't been an issue among our white chickens, just the interesting ones.

It does sound harsh to kill them, at a glance it does. But they were habitually eating their friends, ignoring other food options. Had any of them survived, I'm not sure I want cannibalistic traits to stay in my flock, I'd rather get new birds and be more selective of what we get. Make sure the conditions are perfect or as close as possible to discourage these genetic traits.

So there it is, the tale of the crazy chicken cannibalism mystery. We were floored to find out this was the cause of the hollowed out chickens. When I got into this, no one told me that this was a common thing. Of all the things we considered, like ants, we never ever expected that they were doing it to each other. From what we can tell they probably went for the birds going for the food, the more docile less likely to be cannibalistic types.