Yeah....chickens are assholes. They'll come at you. They'll tear each other up pretty good too. I've seen them go after dogs before. They really are like watching little dinosaurs.
So many questions this raises...
We had that rooster for dinner that night, so he got what he deserved. :)
There's literally rose-tinted glasses you can glue onto their beaks so they can't really perceive red. This prevents them from pecking each-other to death.
This was a local wild chicken that had presumably escaped from a coop, and it appeared to sustain itself on mice all summer.
And you can't help but feel a pang of regret for the vermin. You lost many of your ancestors in just this way. You're a survivor. Tomorrow you're going to eat that egg. In revenge.
I saw this 2 months ago in Thailand.
However, chickens aren't known to be planners.
One of the more harrowing things i've done was a day addling geese eggs on a lake where they're overpopulated. There was two of us.in the canoe. Whenever we found a nest we'd switch duties between sneaking up to the nest to do the egg addling, while the other stood guard with a paddle to ward off the attacking geese.
Battery cages are slightly sloped so that eggs roll out of the cage, out of reach of the birds and for easy egg collection by workers.