Thursday, April 30, 2015

Vegetarians bug chickens.

Some foodies want the best for their potential food.
Thus the craze for "vegetarian fed hens."
Except that might not be a good idea.
Yet for the chickens, who are natural omnivores that readily devour bugs and small animals when they’re available, the forced vegetarianism can be a disaster.
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.
“They’re really like little raptors - they want meat,” said Blake Alexandre, the owner of a 30,000 chicken operation in far northern California that keeps its birds on pasture. “The idea that they ought to be vegetarians is ridiculous.”
Just keep making them delicious.

No comments: