[C19fan]

Some of the foodie types are so stupid. Reminds me of stories of vegans who force their cats and dogs on vegetarian diets.

[SpinnerWebb]

By the same standards, cows ARE, and should not be fed bone-meal and meat-based supplements. That is why we have mad cow disease.

[dainbramaged]

Chickens will eat chicken.

[Defiant]

the company uses “vegetarian fed hens.”

So, vegetarians are the ones who feed the chickens?

[grobdriver]

the forced vegetarianism can be a disaster.

I'm sure our chickens get some protein from bugs they find in the run, but by and large they've been on organic layer feed (and grass when we let them roam the yard) for years with no health issues.

Ummm, good eggs!

[ShadowAce]

Chickens eat rats, too. Baby ones, still blind and in the nest.

I know from experience.

[tbpiper]

I believe that it is ‘settled science’ that chickens are omnivores.

[reasonisfaith]

Chickens will eat lizards with astonishing gusto. I can say it’s a behavior I’ve facilitated, way back in my youth, owing to a purely scientific curiosity.

[fungoking]

One if my favorite memories is sitting on the tailgate of Papa's pickup shucking corn from the garden and throwing the corn worms to the chickens. Left then right, had the hens going back and forth like a tennis match.

[jonrick46]

As an omnivore of the classic design, I am sick and tired of food fetishes. If there is a GMO that makes chicken tastier, get the injection needle fired up!

[Leep]

feeding on the brains of other INFECTED cows

[Katya]

The producers feed animals grains because it’s a cheap and quick way of fattening them up... not because it’s healthy for us to eat them. It’s becoming easier to find grass fed meats, and I can buy eggs from pastured chickens... but I’m still trying to find a store that sells pastured chicken meat close to where I live. I found it amazing that I could easily buy pastured meats and fowl in Lexington, Ky but not here in Maryland.

[GeronL]

It gets worse. There are now people demanding eggs from chickens fed only grass

There is nothing at all "natural" about it.

[zek157]

I guess they have no clue where the term “hen pecked” comes from. They will eat anything including each other if they have to.

[miss marmelstein]

As a city girl who’d love to live in the country, I so love coming on posts like this and finding out all about chickens and livestock, etc. It makes FR so informative and entertaining.

[bunkerhill7]

[dfwgator]

Vegetables are what food eats.

[familyop]

They need bugs—lots of bugs.

[JimSEA]

Maybe they mean the chickens are fed chopped up vegetarians?

[right way right]

Chickens eat fire crackers.

Then my Dad made me pluck it and eat it.

[11th Commandment]

Chickens on an unsupplemented vegetarian diet typically fall short of an essential protein-based amino acid known as methionine, and without it, they fall ill. Worse, the birds will also turn on each other, pecking at each other in search of nutrients, and these incidents can escalate into a henhouse bloodbath, farmers say.

Eggland is making a marketing ploy. All chicken today is feed on Corn and Soy plus feed supplements. Methionine is an organic byproduct in a complicated chemical manufacturing product. What I can't stand is companies market BS all the time to uninformed consumers. We see "gluten free" on products that never had gluten. We see "No trans fat" on products loaded with saturated fat. We see "organic" and assume environmentally friendly when metals are used as pesticides which is deadly to animal life. This is why myths become cultural nomenclature because asinine companies exploit the uneducated to make a profit.