[Zhang Fei]

Commercial birds are breed and maybe genetically modified for maximum and fast growth. They just keep growing until their little hearts can’t keep up. We picked up a few chicken truck escapees and they live a bout a year and die when they’re about the size of a medium turkey.

I wonder if they die of heart disease. Maybe if they were allowed to run around in the yard looking for bugs to eat instead of being fed large amounts of chicken feed, they'd live a little longer.

[fella]

“I wonder if they die of heart disease. Maybe if they were allowed to run around in the yard looking for bugs to eat instead of being fed large amounts of chicken feed, they’d live a little longer.”

The ones we picked up were put out with our yard birds. At first they did OK except they didn’t fly well and we wrote that off to having been raised in a large scale chicken house. But as they got bigger they had a harder time getting around. One broke a foot just jumping down from a low roost and then had a really rough time of it. Their bodies keep growing but their bones only go so far. then one morning they’d be laying flat on their back with their feet in the air like a cartoon the only birds we’ve had to do that.