CHICKENS might not be renowned for their intellect, but they certainly know
what鈥檚 good for them. Vets at the University of Bristol have shown that lame
birds wracked by pain prefer to eat food doped with a painkiller to their normal
diet. The chickens even know how to match the dose of the painkiller to the
amount of pain, with the birds that are suffering the worst agony consuming the
most spiked feed. Healthy birds avoided it and continued to eat their normal
feed.
The researchers, led by Steve Kestin, suggest that the birds learnt that the
doped food gave them relief from pain. 鈥淭he results show that broiler chickens
can learn to self-administer the analgesic carprofen in their feed,鈥� say Steve
Kestin and his colleagues in The Veterinary Record (vol 146, p
307).