• Tudsamfa@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    3 days ago

    “Idk still, we may have some agriculture now, but if times are good, we’d rather save the grain for bad times than feed it you, and if times are bad we’d rather eat 1 part of pests than one tenth of a part of chicken. Is there anything more you bring to the table?”

    “The males of our species are like ridiculously aggressive, maybe…”

    “Bloodsport? Hell yeah!”

  • TomMasz@piefed.socialEnglish
    12·
    3 days ago

    I once found a stink bug in the house. I scooped it up with a piece of paper, opened up the back door, and called my chickens over. Once one of them saw the stink bug, it was gone instantly. No fuss, no muss, no stink.

    • toynbee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      3 days ago

      Very frequently, flying insects of all kinds will land and hang out on the screens of my front windows, very visibly. Every once in a while I’ll see the flutter of a wild bird out of the corner of my eye. The next time I look up, whatever bug was there will be gone.

      Odd, that.

  • Shareni@programming.devEnglish
    611·
    3 days ago

    There are a lot better animals for all of those purposes.

    Rabbits are an incomparably better source of meat, and you don’t need to feed them grains to get good yields. Also they’re the only ones who convert plant trash into directly usable fertilizer.

    Ducks are a better source of eggs, and eat pests from the garden without digging everything up.

    Guinea fowl are better as an anti pest bird.

    The only thing chickens have on them is the reason why they’ve been spread across the world: cocks are easily persuaded to kill eachother in a brutal fashion for human entertainment.

    • Akasazh@feddit.nlEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      I saw this documentary about the holy grail once and it seemed that the rabbits were rather fierce fighters too…

    • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      Are you sure that’s the main reason? It’s seems like cock fighting is pretty niche or outside of the mainstream. At least today. Though I don’t know the history of this, but in older mainstream art and literature it is also not really prominent.

      • Shareni@programming.devEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        No, that’s an urban myth

        Edit to clarify: protein toxicity is a real condition, but unless you’re a starving in the middle of nowhere with nothing to eat but meat for months, it’s not a concern at all. You can get it from eating only beef just as well.

    • pticrix@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      Rabbit meat is good, but goddamn if those pesky small bones make for a stressful dinner. Unsure if this is a rabbit related trouble or a bad butcher related trouble, however - but it has been my experience.

      • Shareni@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        I have very little experience with them since the industry is pretty much only getting started over here, but you can debone them thoroughly. Like you can even get all of the meat in one piece without any bones.

    • qyron@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Rabbits fell out of popularity. It became an expensive meat. It used to be a good source of food and income foor poorer people, just by selling the meat or by processing the pelts. The drawback on rabbit is the very lean meat (see rabbit hunger).

      The males are exceptionally aggressive as well…

      Duck eggs are not for everyone. And the creatures require more water. The fatty meat is not very agreable for everyone.

      Guinea fowls are excellent for clearing ticks infestations. I know they are egg laying but talking with a people that tried to raise them I got the impression that getting the birds to nest is quite hard. One person kept a chicken around to incubate the eggs from the guineas.

      • Shareni@programming.devEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Rabbits fell out of popularity. It became an expensive meat.

        We’re talking about historical context, not contemporary comparisons.

        The drawback on rabbit is the very lean meat (see rabbit hunger).

        You can get protein toxicity from any meat, and it’s not a concern unless you’re starving in the middle of winter and have literally no food besides meat.

        Also, ancient people didn’t have factory farmed broilers, and millennia of selective breeding for meat, those chickens were lean as well.

        The males are exceptionally aggressive as well…

        Because cocks are gentle and don’t regularly attack humans? And that’s after a lot of selective breeding to make them more docile, and not for fighting.

        Duck eggs are not for everyone. And the creatures require more water. The fatty meat is not very agreable for everyone.

        Edit: Apparently they were domesticated a lot later.

        Yeah guinea fowl were a stretch for many reasons.