this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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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.
I saw this documentary about the holy grail once and it seemed that the rabbits were rather fierce fighters too...
Yes, but as you can see they kill their prey too quickly to have entertainment value.
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.
It's niche/illegal nowadays, but we're talking about a very old tradition in SEA that was spread to Europe by the Romans.
https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/08/chickens-were-initially-domesticated-for-cockfighting-not-food/
Isn't rabbit usually advised against as their meat is too lean?
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.
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.
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.
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.
We're talking about historical context, not contemporary comparisons.
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.
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.
Edit: Apparently they were domesticated a lot later.
Yeah guinea fowl were a stretch for many reasons.