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It's funny. Laugh. Technology

Chicken Run 550

Posted by michael from the run-lola-run dept.
Applying modern technology to the task of corraling chickens for the slaughterhouse results in a chicken-catching machine that surprisingly is not as gruesome as it appears. Never thought about a "chicken vacuum" before? After reading this, you won't be able to get it out of your head. :) Sadly, scientists are already researching ways for the chickens to fight back.
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Chicken Run More

Chicken Run

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  • but it's more humane! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sweeney37 ( 325921 ) * <.mikesweeney. .at. .gmail.com.> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:10PM (#6127954) Homepage Journal
    Some of the biggest fans are animal-rights groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The machines are far more gentle on the birds than human handlers are. "We support using machines that reduce the panic, fear and horror of chickens," says Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns, a Machipongo, Va., group that opposes eating chickens and also runs a sanctuary for a few lucky birds that manage to escape the farms (usually by falling off a truck).

    They do realize the bird's final destination, right?

    Mike

    • Re:but it's more humane! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:14PM (#6127983)
      I'm all for reducing the "panic, fear, and horror" of chickens. Animals that die scared don't taste as good, because the chemical soup that gets released into the bloodstream (adrenaline and so on) gives the meat a tainted flavor. Yuck.

      Animals should die happy. They taste better that way.
    • Well, I guess its more humane than using my Dyson. Still I would've thought that the noise coming from that contraption's eggshaust and engine would've scared them away before they had a chance to be sucked in. I mean eggsactly how bloated have these chickens been raised, so as not to run at first sight from that thing?

      Sorry.

    • Re:but it's more humane! (Score:4, Funny)

      by flyneye ( 84093 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:29PM (#6128093) Homepage
      It could be worse. Boeing has a "chicken cannon" to test impact of birds on jet engines.(hahahaha I wanna be the guy runnin that one!)

      • Is it true that boeing was worried when they first used the machine that all their jet engines would have to be redesigned until they realized that the techs wheren't thawing the chicken out before use.

        • Re:but it's more humane! (Score:4, Informative)

          by zcat_NZ ( 267672 ) <zcat@wired.net.nz> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:36PM (#6128476) Homepage
          apparently no. [snopes.com]

        • chicken cannon / dethaw (Score:5, Funny)

          by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @11:07PM (#6129502) Journal
          I was told by an aquaintance who worked at a major airplane engine manufacture stories about this. (note to everyone - Boeing actually DOES NOT MAKE ENGINES - so it would be quite silly if they did compliance and validations on the engines as much as engine manufactures, no?)

          Anyhoo - apparently the method of the "chicken cannon" uses anything from a quail to a small turkey. They bird is stuck in a ball-like styrofoam shell, and when the entire apparatus leaves the cannon, the shell disintegrates, and the dead bird flies toward the intake of a full-power jet engine at maybe 3-500 mph.

          The thing is, though - unless you have some REALLY big birds, they (dethawed) don't do any damage to the engine at all. The highspeed photograph would show in one frame the chicken flying toward the blades, and the next frame the head is chopped off, and the next part of the neck, one after the tip of the chest, etc. Apparently the blades are going so fast that the chicken's inertia alone will let it "float" while being chopped up and spit out through the back.

          The humorous part is when they lent the chicken-cannon to france rail companies to test their high-speed trains. Apparently when the french set up the cannon and fired the small turkey toward the front-windshield, giddy with anticipation of everything going well, the bird went through the widshield, punched a hole in the dummy sitting in the operator's seat, went through the wall behind the dummy operator, and landed about halfway down the train car after causing quite some havoc within it. Everyone was scratching there heads with jaws to the ground (obviously you would not want to drive this thing if it will leave you a turkey-sized entry+exit-wound). Eventually it turned out that it was because they only (!) thawed the bird for 6 hours or something... When they did it with a proper bird it damaged the wind(bird)shield but the driver remained intact.

          moral of the story? you can hear some interesting stuff from aerospace industry engineers.

      • Re:but it's more humane! (Score:4, Funny)

        by Red Pointy Tail ( 127601 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @09:21PM (#6128993)
        Poor chicken.

        For its suffering, it hope it will be cannonized....

        (ducks to avoid flying chicken)

    • Re:but it's more humane! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by azav ( 469988 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:37PM (#6128156) Homepage Journal
      Yes, but it their path to their destination traumatic or humane?

      Temple Grandin did research and studies on humane cattle harvesting. As it turns out, it's not only better for the animals to die in a non stressed manner but it's better for the quality of the meat and the profits of the company.

      Very interesting story.
      http://www.grandin.com/
      Interesting read.
    • That final destination is, after all, their raison d'etre, for the individuals as well as the species.

      Anyway, I respect PETA for advocating incrementally better treatment even if many of them would prefer that the animals not be eaten at all.

    • Re:but it's more humane! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by snarkh ( 118018 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:08PM (#6128342)
      You are going to die too. Should you not be able to enjoy it meanwhile?

    • Re:but it's more humane! (Score:4, Funny)

      by uncoveror ( 570620 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:48PM (#6128540) Homepage
      Tyson and Pilgrim's Pride could save themselves a lot of time and trouble by switching to Chick'N. [uncoveror.com] They will just need to contact New Dawn Biotech in Alberta to negotiate licensing.

  • If they could ramp this up… (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:14PM (#6127981)
    â¦to toddler size, this could revolutionize the daycare industry.

  • Somehow ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BillsPetMonkey ( 654200 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:14PM (#6127982)
    KFC will never seem the same again with Colonel Sanders driving that thing.

  • Very nice, humane, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SamBC ( 600988 ) <s.barnett-cormack@lancaster.ac.uk> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:15PM (#6127990)
    I personally would like to see more effort and ingenuity go into finding ways to kill the birds more humanely. I for one wouldn't want to go by being dipped in electrified water *then* beheaded. Just the beheading will do me, if it has to be done.

    Don't get me wrong - I support the eating of meat, for those who choose to (like me) - I just wish we could do it in more sensible, humane ways.
    • Well there are many ways to slaughter animals, but not too many of them are feasible at the scale at which chickens are usually done. You can gas the animals, It's not overly painful but then you need to keep a ton of poisonous gas around, and run the risk of accidentally gassing your co-workers, not good. Furthermore, I don't know much about chemistry but I can guess that eating gassed meat isn't too good for you. You can lethally inject the birds but then you'd need more syringes than an army of heroin

      • Sure electrocution is not the best way to do it, but I guess we just have to hope that some creative person can think of a way.

        Just to point out - the electric shock does not kill them, merely hurt like hell and stun them so the corpse doesn't keep moving.

        The chickens aren't really alive after beheading, when they run around, just certain bits of muscle and nervous system keep going on inertia. The chicken no longer perceives pain. The only reason not to behead without the shock is to make the execution

    • reminds me of a south park eps. ware they had turkey factory ware they did humane killing by throwing the turkeys into a room then showed a film with a sunset and when all the turkeys heads poped up to watch it a big saw swept by cutting off their heads
    • Ok, so the subject is a bit misleading...thesen't aren't all killing tools but they're pretty crazy. It's worth a karma troll anyway. :)

      Spinal Cord Remover [jarvisnz.com]

      De-Horner [jarvisnz.com]

      Bung Ring Expander (!!!!) [jarvisnz.com]

      The Stun Box [jarvisnz.com]

      Bung Droppers [technex.pl] (Removes 1200 assholes an hour, no shit.)

      Head Cutter [technex.pl]

      The Lung Gun [technex.pl] (i don't want to know)

      "Electrical Stimulation" [technex.pl] (somehow, i think it does more than stimulate them...)

  • McDonald's (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrCocktail ( 468886 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:15PM (#6127992)
    McDonald's Corp. is encouraging its chicken suppliers to mechanically collect at least half the birds it buys by year's end.

    McDonald's actually uses real chicken?

  • in the long term..... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by maliabu ( 665176 )
    will chicken eventually learn to avoid the machine after a while?

    • Re:in the long term..... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I hate to be the one that breaks this to you, but the chikens are only picked up once.
    • Aside from the fact that these are incredibly dumb animals, they have no reason to learn to avoid the machine. First time they experience it, they get sucked in and end up on my plate.

  • Bawk? Are you Jhn Clux0r? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:17PM (#6128005)
    Chickenator Three: Rise of the Machines! [wsj.com]

    Looks like a cross between an EE grad student's robotics project and something out of the Transformers.

    Hook up a flamethrower to it, and we've got a mobile autonomous BBQ station. Where's Mark Pauline and Survival Research Labs when we need 'em? Bring on the Chickenators!

  • quoteness (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:20PM (#6128031)
    Mr. Tweedy: What is it?
    Mrs. Tweedy: It's a pie machine, you idiot. Chickens go in, pies come out.
    Mr. Tweedy: Ooh, what kind of pies?
    Mrs. Tweedy: Apple.
    Mr. Tweedy: My favorite.
    Mrs. Tweedy: Chicken pies, you great lummox!
  • I'd hate to be on the QA team for that one.

    "30 birds killed in 5 minutes. That's a bug. P1, too, I'd say."

    The article says it's smelly work, too.

    No thanks.

  • Editors... :-)

  • Seriously (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DavidBrown ( 177261 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:22PM (#6128038) Journal
    This is more of a "News for Farmers, Stuff that Moos" story. But from a technological viewpoint, it's an interesting story. I for one didn't realize that chickens bred for meat were actually allowed to run free (albeit in a darkened warehouse). It's actually more "humane" than I had thought.

    But this isn't really an advance in treating chickens more humanely. The farmers profit because of 1) reduced labor costs; 2) reduced worker's comp claims; and 3) reduced "breakage" allowing them to send more chickens to market. I can see why animal rights groups would be supportive of this technology, but it's really only a change on the level of replacing the axe-man with the guillotine.

    • i Seriously don't see how this made the front page

      • Re:Seriously (Score:3, Funny)

        by eht ( 8912 )
        because there isn't much of a back page

        it could be dumped to section, but almost no one reads those unless you have the collapse section option turned on which makes everything front page
      • i Seriously don't see how this made the front page

        I guess we could use a "farmhands.slashdot.org"
  • "We support using machines that reduce the panic, fear and horror of chickens,"

    Horror of chickens... I like that.

    -T

  • O/T: Duck Hearding (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:23PM (#6128049) Journal
    Several years ago, I visited Oxford university on an open day. One of the students was developing an electric sheep-dog as a final year project. Since they did not have a ready supply of sheep, they were testing it by making it round up ducks. I can't help feeling that these two projects might be related...

  • reminds me of Baraka (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tancred ( 3904 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:24PM (#6128050)
    Anyone else seen Baraka [imdb.com]?

    Among other glorious and terrible images, there are shots from a chicken processing plant. It shows thousands of chicks tumbling off a conveyor belt, swirling down a giant metal funnel and having their beaks burned.

  • Already got that (Score:5, Funny)

    by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:24PM (#6128054)

    My appartment is about 1800 cubic feet.

    There are exactly zero chikens in my appartment.

    So: chiken density = 0 / 1800 = 0 = chicken vacuum

  • "Looking like a combination airport baggage carousel and tank, the devices can capture 150 birds a minute. That's as many as a team of eight skilled men can corral."

    So they plan on putting more people in the heartland out of much needed work...

    Where will my future job prospects end... if an decent IT worker cant get a job catching chickens, then all is lost

    hmmm maybe they need someone to network these together(beowulf anyone) and build AI then the robots to do the dirty work for us... then we can sit ba
    • well....if you had finished reading the article....it said that most chicken catchers don't stay at the job very long....and that a team gets reduced from 8 to 6, and that those 6 (see the direct quotes at the end) enjoy a much higher job standard than before, get paid about the same, and the less chickens are hurt or killed

  • Chicken Run (Score:3, Funny)

    by EngMedic ( 604629 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:28PM (#6128082) Homepage
    Oblig. Chicken Run quote:
    "chickens go in...pies come out!"

  • Moo... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Chagatai ( 524580 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:28PM (#6128085) Homepage
    I work in the food service industry, particularly in the area which makes steak and pork. This device is nothing compared to some of the nightmare fuel machines that are in our plants. To give you guys a good idea, check out the Semi-automatic Neck Breaker [technex.pl] (this is designed for poultry, not for cows or hogs, though). Just remember to thank the people who put the food on your table sometimes. And check out the rest of that site for more H. R. Geiger-borne instruments of fun.

  • as someone who has caught chickens for vaccination (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:29PM (#6128095)
    as a job in my teens:

    1. It is probably one of the worst jobs in North America. It stinks like ammonia all day in the barn, it's hot, hard to breathe, and they leave the lights off to calm the birds. (picture rolling yourself up in a thick blanket that 30 people have urinated on, and stay in their all day with the heat cranked up in the house). When you get home from work, you have to strip naked before you go in your home, and hose off in the yard, or the smell gets everywhere. (I took to burning clothes at one point outside.)

    2. Unfourtunately, I can't possibly see this machine keeping up with a human. When yo get good at it, you can catch and hold 6 birds at a time. And, regardless of what the article says, it's very easy to catch a chicken in a dark barn with practice. It's just hard work.

    Basically, I can't see this replacing cheap student labour. Just my two cents.

  • what if tolkien... (Score:3, Funny)

    by QEDog ( 610238 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:30PM (#6128098)
    The chicken, sunlight coruscating off its radiant yellow-white coat of feathers, approached the dark, sullen asphalt road and scrutinized it intently with its obsidian-black eyes. Every detail of the thoroughfare leapt into blinding focus: the rough texture of the surface, over which countless tires had worked their relentless tread through the ages; the innumerable fragments of stone embedded within the lugubrious mass, perhaps quarried from the great pits where the Sons of Man labored not far from here; the dull black asphalt itself, exuding those waves of heat which distort the sight and bring weakness to the body; the other attributes of the great highway too numerous to give name. And then it crossed it.

  • Permaculture Chickens and Cows (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:30PM (#6128100) Journal
    I read recently about an experiment in permaculture, which is the science of making food production ecologically sustainable. The Chinese have been making an art of it for thousands of years, with complicated interlocking cultivation systems, where the waste from one part is always recycled in some other part.

    In this system, chickens were kept in small flocks in 20x20 foot covered cages. The cages were on wheels. Small herds of cows were also kept, in constant rotation among many small pastures. After the cows were done in one pasture, the chicken cages were rolled in. The chickens broke the cow patties apart looking for bugs, which were plentiful. This allowed the cow manure to break down faster, resulting in quicker regrowth of the grass, as well as lower rates of disease among the cows. The chickens were healthier as well, and got to run about and hunt for bugs, which if I were a chicken, I would vastly prefer to living in some overcrowded factory. Overall, the production of both beef and chicken increased dramatically over other organic ranching methods, putting it on a par with non-organic methods.

    The inventor of the system based the idea off of the fact that in nature, herds of wild ungulates are always followed by flocks of birds. Pretty clever, eh? Another thing: you don't need a robot chicken catcher, you just wheel the cage up to the slaughterhouse and pull the chickens in with a net.

  • Version for humans (Score:5, Funny)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:30PM (#6128108) Homepage
    The large version, for riot control, will be really something.

    "The scoops are on the way!" - Soylent Green.

  • Chicken Run! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:31PM (#6128117) Journal
    I don't want to be a pie. I don't like gravy.
  • It was forced to do so by the chicken-hole principle.

  • ROFL (Score:2)

    by ratajik ( 57826 )

    Early devices included the chicken vacuum, which sucked up birds and shot them through tubes to waiting trucks. But the birds tended to plug up the tubes and turn somersaults as they traveled inside the contraption. We had too many die on us, recalls Buddy Burruss, vice president of operations at Tip Top Poultry Inc. of Marietta, Ga., which tested and quickly abandoned the pneumatic approach two decades ago.

    Hahahahahahah, he's right, I'm not going to be able to get the image of somersaulting chickens get

  • I've done it (Score:5, Informative)

    by fava ( 513118 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:34PM (#6128135)
    I did chicken catching once when visiting relatives out in the country. I must say that chickens are very stupid.

    Imagine a large barn with chickens covering the entire floor. As chickens are removed from the barn the remaining chickens do NOT move into the empty space, they remain packed together as the barn empties. There is no chasing involved.

    The chickens do not react at all until you grab them by the legs, the most common reaction is to peck, scratch or shit on your hands. And it stank.

    I do remember that I was paid well (for a 13 year old) for a few hours work and the farmers wife had a very nice breakfast ready for us when we were done.

    I certanly wouldn't want to do it for a living.
  • OMG!! Some one HAS to upload a video of this...

    forget ellen fliess, forget that porky starwars geek, this could be the newest craze!! this thing looks AWSOME!!
  • Morpheus: Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

    Mouse: That's exactly my point. Exactly! Because you have to wonder: how do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, whi

  • Link whoring (Score:3, Informative)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:40PM (#6128175) Journal
    mfg website [lewismola.com] (uses frames - scroll top frame down for selections)
    bigger picture [lewismola.com]
    specifications page [lewismola.com]

    my sig:
  • Here's a much better look at this contraption (http://www.lewismola.com/ [lewismola.com]) including a person in the frame to give it much better scale!
  • The first time I heard the phrase 'rendered chicken parts,' the first thing that came to mind was computer-generated 3D graphics of chicken parts.

    *shudder*
  • Never thought about a "chicken vacuum" before?

    Must...not...make..."suck"..."cock"...jokes...
  • That article about chickens/teech = baldness cure reads just like a randomly generated SimCity article. Ack - here's hoping President bush stays away from that 'Disaster' menu!

    Ryan Fenton
  • Great! Now the Department of Agriculture will want to implement a dental care programs for rural chickens.

  • Picard is nothing if he isn't bald!

  • What's wrong with the industry? Why do chicken run? Why not just keep them from the day 0 in individual small cages?

    I'd rather invest money to individual cages than to catching machine.

  • The birds flap, scratch and befoul their captors. Most people can tolerate only a few months of that before flying the coop.

    So you think your job sucks. Then you read something like this.

    Only a few months?!?! Hell, I wouldn't last til lunch. So this is what migrant workers are for...

  • Once again, another of my 1337 job skillz hosed! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zogger ( 617870 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @06:58PM (#6128282) Homepage Journal
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!1!11!! I've DONE this job, lots, catching chickens in the dark and putting them in cages. It's one of the "fowl"er jobs out there. If at all possible, it's scheduled on new moon nights,or as close as possible, as dark as possible. On one farm where I worked doing this (back early 70's,pure fox platinum blonde farmers daughter, weekend job, etc, you know how it is....), we'd even ride up in the front end loader and put a hood over the public street light on the road out front, to further make it darker. The darker it is, the less they freak out. Next, the farmer, who was a closet alky and hid bottles from his old lady all over the farm, would give all us young fool morons dragooned into this cluck burger transportation service multiple shots of his wild turkey. Thus fortified, we are off! You slide into the chicken house, bend over, feel along the floor, find a chicken leg and snatch it, holding it with one finger, you find another, and another, three in each hand finally, for a total of 6. Then you trudge outside to the truck, load these now non-sleepy bundles of flapping indignation into wooden cages, then someone else would stack the cages. Back and forth and forth and back, on into the wee hours. This was BUHZILLIONS of chickens per chicken house, usually over 20,000 or so. That farm was slightly different from the story, these were egg layers going to the battery cages, before that, free ranging in open houses. Same deal though, ya gots to get cackleberry squatter from point A to B. Each chicken ran around 6-7 lbs. Do the math by the end of the night of what you probably carried in livestock tonnage, maybe 4 or 5 guys doing it.

    I think I made a whopper 2 clams an hour back then. If it wasn't for that girl, well, I just don't know how long I would have done that job...

  • Chicken Matrix (Score:5, Funny)

    by appleLaserWriter ( 91994 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:07PM (#6128335)
    What else needs to be done to make chickens into batteries?

  • Ugh. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:13PM (#6128370)
    It's nice to see technology being applied to making the food industry more humane. However, I must use this opportunity to bitch about the quality of meat in the US. The poultry here, at least the stuff you buy at Giant or Safeway, sucks. Totally bland and tasteless. My family lived in Bangladesh until I was 4 or so. There, it takes six months to get a chicken ready for sale. Here, thanks to all the growth hormones, it takes a few weeks. In the process, the chicken is robbed of all flavor. When we moved here, it took me months to get used to the chicken here. Even now, the only way I can stand it is to cook it in tons of spices or deep fry it in grease.

  • Asounding Improvement! (Score:5, Funny)

    by utahjazz ( 177190 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:21PM (#6128411)
    A five-man crew using a mechanical harvester can do the work of eight men

    My god, it's like something out of science fiction.

  • Link to product (Score:5, Informative)

    by SparkyTWP ( 556246 ) <`phatcoq' `at' `insightbb.com'> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:29PM (#6128446) Homepage
    For those interested, here's [brightcoop.com] a link to the product page, with a handy dandy video of it in action.

  • Chicken Hypnosis (Score:5, Funny)

    by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @09:18PM (#6128974) Homepage Journal
    Berry tried everything to force the birds to move under their own power. He flashed strobe lights in their eyes...

    Anybody else get the feeling he also tried a pendulum, but won't admit it?

  • Chickens are people, damn you! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Wynken de Word ( 649514 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @10:49PM (#6129423) Homepage Journal
    The scoops are coming!

    I missed the 'e' in 'humane' from this line in the article:

    "Starting in the early 1980s, Britain's Silsoe Research Institute received about $200,000 a year from the government to design a humane harvesting machine."

  • Easier way to catch chickens (Score:3, Funny)

    by earthforce_1 ( 454968 ) <earthforce_1@y a h oo.com> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @11:51PM (#6129673) Journal
    A former neighbour told me this trick...

    He used a small ball of twine, which he would coat with suet and toss into the chicken pen. One of the chickens would inevitably swallow the twine, and pass it after a few days. He would then collect roll the remaining twine back into a ball, add some more suet and toss it back to the chickens. Another chicken would soon swallow the suet covered ball, which was still attached to the first chicken. After a week or so you have a whole chain of connected chickens on a rope following each other around head to tail. Makes them real easy to catch!

  • A what? (Score:3, Funny)

    by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Friday June 06, 2003 @01:25AM (#6129970) Homepage Journal
    Britain's Silsoe Research Institute received about $200,000 a year from the government to design a humane harvesting machine

    Anyone else read that as "human harvesting machine"?

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