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We have a house in a wooded area in Ol’ Virginny with some largish windows. We’d occasionally find a dead bird that had thumped, full speed, into one of the windows and done kilt itself. (Thankfully this kinda stopped when we repainted from a dark brown to a much lighter color.)

So, one day I hear a loud thump on the window and walked right over to look down and see if the bird was only stunned or ‘cleanup on aisle six’ was needed again. As soon as I looked down another bird flew right down to it and pecked it’s eyes out. Needless to say, ’twas me that was stunned. Erk!

Now here’s my thought, I know that different breeds of dogs have quite different traits and behavior characteristics. Could it be that you’ve lucked out with your chikken breed selections so far that you’ve not gotten ones that hate being looked at by other chikkens? (Mo-o-om… he’s lookin at me!)

I belong to half a dozen chicken groups online, though, and I’ve never heard of eye pecking. All kinds of feather pecking and aggression, but not eye pecking.

Though I do know you have to be careful of birds and eyes generally. I have an auntie who lost an eye to a pet crow, and I was really very cringey around my chickens at first.

I was thinking, wouldnt it be better if your chickens could fly? That way they could evade predators. Now, they may take off on you tho I think the free meals would encourage them to stick around.

One of my High School classmates’ father and two uncles had a part-time, mostly-somewhat-seasonal business, for many years, making (and selling, of course) Chicken Glasses – from what he once related to me (we were both somewhat “under the influence” at the time, but still…and I knew, already, at that point, what they did from prior [totally-sober, AFAIK] conversation with him, et.al. – that’s how I knew to bring up the subject), there wasn’t a bunch of money in it. According to him, the need was due to the salient fact that chikkens, when in the throes of “pecking-order” aggression, would, often enough, persist in the attack until drawing blood – and the red/pink-tinted lenses would supply that sighting of the color that would slow or terminate the aggression.

Dunno, personally – though I once did Chief Feed/Water-Dispenser Refiller And Swamper-Outer duties for a (roughly) 30′ X 40′ chicken-house (plus outdoor “run” of maybe 5 times that size, ‘tween there and the corn-crib) populated by about 100 (or less – the population went down as the year went on; lotsa chicken dinners and a freezer partly full of Fall and Winter “put-by” provisions, y’know?) of the critters (Grandparents on my Dad’s side came to spend the Summer and early Fall in a trailer on the farm where we lived, and Grandma reverted, for awhile, to her “farm-girl roots”…and there was this big ol’ empty chicken-house, just sittin’ there…plus, a wee surplus of Teen-Age Boy Labor…), and while there was undoubtedly a certain pecking-order prevailing, it was pretty busy in that place, and I didn’t spend any more time in there than what was required by parental/grand-parental pressure (didn’t smell all that sweet, y’know? – plus, there was only one rooster after a short while, and he and I didn’t get on at all; early-on, I took to carrying a sawed-off broomhandle – he needed re-convincing every few days that my ankles were not to be trifled-with), so I never paid any attention, really, to exactly the outcome of any internecine chikken battles…besides, this was all a couple of years before I ever knew about chicken glasses at all.

I can tell you this much – for most of that Summer and Fall, I had not much use for eggs for breakfast – though, I did enjoy the fried, broiled or baked chicken for dinners all that Fall and Winter…

Did you purchase any of the glasses? It would make for an interesting experiment if nothing else!

When the kid daughter did 4H we had 75-100 chicks to get six show fryers and two alternates. Fed them our homemade chow with corn shorts, grains and butter. Lots of butter. Get up in the middle of the night to stir the chickens so they’d eat something. Eight pound fryers! Whoever has worn the best trail to the chicken house usually wins. Best part was buncha chicken in the freezer. And dumplings.

Okay now I thought of R. Crumb and Zap Comics #2.

“Set my chickens free!”

Here in the PNW we have big black birds that go “Caw!” I always figured they were crows – just big ones. Eventually I went to one of those “How to tell them apart” web sites and nope, the big ones are ravens.

Which creeps me out somewhat. You can’t look at that beak and tell me that it didn’t evolve specifically to pluck out eyeballs. And Odin always is accompanied by ravens, right? The story about how he lost his eye is BS, I know it. He’s covering for his bloodthirsty pets.

A country feller out here told me if you see a solitary rook, it’s a crow and if you see a bunch of crows, they’re rooks. I don’t know if we have ravens.

Ric Fan, my chickens can fly. I never clipped their wings in part because I thought it would help them evade predators. I was a little concerned they’d fly off at first, but it’s never been an issue.

To be honest, they’re lousy flyers. The littler they are, the better they do. The old girls can’t lift more than in inch or two above the grass, and seldom try.

There are Ravens at the Tower of London, anyway…very pampered and spoiled Ravens. 🙂

I saw those ravens back in the mid nineties when I visited London. Pampered and spoiled they are… but then, they’re Royal Ravens. And in fact, much of England (as is nearly all of Western Europe) is pampered and spoiled. Comes of a millennia or more of the same limited land being tended and manicured.

When they’re not spilling each others’ blood all over it, I mean.

Anyway, the legend is something along the lines of the monarchy will stand so long as the ravens remain on the Tower grounds. And therefore their pin feathers are carefully clipped so as to prevent flight.