"Optical Distortion, Inc" A new product, contact lenses for chickens, is to be introduced by a small firm formed to market the product. An entry strategy must be planned including price, sales force, size, and location. Allows data for computation of economic benefit to farmers. Includes state-by-state chicken population data for planning a rollout sales program.
But some ideas cannot be crushed by bankruptcy and the dream of providing lenses to all of America’s hens was carried on by the son of one of Vision Control Inc.’s founders, a young Mr. Randall Wise. Wise, a Harvard Business school graduate and former nautical shipping consultant, used the millions he made from selling his software company to establish Animalens, Inc.
Instead of pecking at each other (success!), the hens were now pecking at the air, rubbing their eyes repeatedly on their wings, and suffering from corneal ulcers and ruptured eyes.
> the coloring was thought to prevent a chicken wearing them from recognizing blood on other chickens, which may increase the tendency for abnormal injurious behavior
So that's only relevant tot the rose-colored variant.
I think the answer lies in this quote right above it:
> They differ from blinders in that they allow the bird to see forward, whereas blinders do not.
Where "blinders" is a hyperlink to an article concerning blinders for chickens.
That article has a piece comparing blinders to spectacles:
> Blinders work by reducing the accuracy of pecking at the feathers or body of another bird, rather than spectacles which have coloured lenses and allow the bird to see forwards but alter the perceived colour, particularly of blood.
But this again only refers to the coloured lenses, which in the article was said to be a variant.
So my understanding is that both blinders and spectacles work by restricting the vision of the bird but the spectactles additionally had a rose-colored variant.
So when they look down (which for a chicken means bending their neck), they can see the ground and their feed.
When looking ahead, their vision is obscured and blurry, opaque, so they won't attack or eat other chickens.
(the red is an additional option)
It has those goggles in it. Still remember fondly to this day (not the game, the chicken goggles).
They can be very mean to each other. “Pecking order” is literally true and the results can be heartbreaking. Ours have never pecked each other’s eyes, thank heaven, but I’m guessing most of that is from the roosters, not the hens. Roosters can get disgustingly rapey and have to be separated from the hens, who can get seriously injured during the mating process.
In my view, we have massive problems (child brain development, social problems) in the world because of protein scarcity, as capitalism excels providing everyone with ample cheap carbs but cheap sustainable protein, not so much. I dream of open source bioreactors for algae (spirulina etc) too boost availability of Protein & Omega 3 (which is another hugely undersupplied nutrient, esp. in non-coastal regions and as appetite for sunflower-fried batter goes up, because Omega 6 cancels out 3).. here in Dresden, we have a small start-up https://algenwerk.de that is trying to commercialize it but the cost really has to be brought down a lot, rn one jar is about 8€ for some green goo that tastes like nothing, but it has potential and they are a talented team.
This anthromorphization is deeply annoying. What next? Turtles don’t care about age of consent?
if you think about it, most animals die fucked up deaths and end up starving, injured, or being torn apart by a predator.
They are, but also extremely dumb. I always think of Herzog's rant about chickens and their stupidity.
As they are literal dinosaurs, the terrifying aspect of gigantic carnivore sauropods with the "intelligence" of a chicken has never been properly depicted in movies.
This has been observed long before we started cramming them into tiny spaces, but it certainly doesn't help.
Also, the males, become quite agressive past 4 months of age. They also grow sizeable spurs hard as nails, usually these are trimmed if you have more than one rooster. Roosters will attempt to kill chicks occasionally, although they usually do a great job protecting them from predators. They are able to scare foxes sometimes :)
Searching for it reveals pink plastic chicken glasses for sale today, so they still seem to exist. Or maybe those are blinders instead
thomassmith65•4d ago