Chickens kill fox

bcp · Mar 13, 2019

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47551786

The unusual incident in Brittany took place after the fox entered the coop with 3,000 hens through an automatic hatch door which closed immediately.
"There was a herd instinct and they attacked him with their beaks," said Pascal Daniel, head of farming at the agricultural school Gros-Ch麩e.

Bruce

MossRoad · Mar 13, 2019

EDIT: OK, that was uncalled for.

ovrszd · Mar 13, 2019

They outfoxed him.

MossRoad · Mar 13, 2019

That's better.

OldMcDonald · Mar 13, 2019

In its usual way the way BBC used the expression "chicken" which in its city minded way means any domestic fowl. To go with the story they showed a photograph of some laying hens that had been debeaked. Most unusually, these hens were fully feathered - the usual photos show hens close to the end of their time and with bare necks.

It is pure guesswork, but my guess is that these "chickens" were free range broilers which are not slaughtered until about 3 months old when they are quite formidable beasts. Alternatively it could have been a broiler breeder farm.

My wife and I worked briefly on a broiler breeder farm in Australia in 1979, and whilst I have kept poultry of several kinds on a commercial scale over more than half a century I have never come across anything like the young cockerels being raised as potential sires. All employees carried a length of poy pipe because these things would attack people. My wife has a not particularly big scar on her face from one such attack. It still shows after 40 years. I have always considered that domestic fowl are descended from raptor dinosaurs.