Video: Glass Fed Chickens

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PONTOTOC, Miss. (WCBI) — A Pontotoc farmer has been successfully growing chickens now for about 75 years. Some of you might be surprised at what’s included in the diet of those yard birds.

In rural Western Pontotoc County, an old time farmer using old methods, is able to raise tasty chickens that lay good eggs for both him and his neighbors.

“Somebody in the community gets sick I take them a quart of chicken broth and chicken, and its good for you,” said Higgins.

Ever since he was a boy, Higgins would watch his father break up canning jars and feed slithers of glass to the chickens. Even big time poultry farmers at that time added unusually hard and brittle items to the birds’ diet.

“And the chicken farmers, they feed some roughage in the feed and they feed oyster shells,” said Higgins.

One would think that broken glass would damage the innards of those animals. Not so. Unlike us humans who need our teeth, saliva, and some available digestive juices, these animals need a little more help.

“And it doesn’t hurt them, it helps them, it gets in their craw and it helps them to digest their food,” said Higgins.

And so the next time you are hankering for chicken in your diet, just know this, the animal that you are eating just may have swallowed something you certainly would avoid eating.

“When you kill that chicken and cut him open, and get in his gizzard, that glass will be just as slick as a button,” said Higgins.

According to what Farmer Higgins tells us, chickens, like goats, will eat almost anything.