Bespectacled hens
not speckled hens...
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| Steampunk chicken glasses! |
A few weeks after making my Jersey Boy Sliders for our So Not The Superbowl party,
I was watching Storage Wars where Barry The Collector found some
chicken glasses in his unit. They showed a little news reel about them
and then he drove out to a chicken ranch to get an expert to apprise
them. They tried them on one of the chickens and after seeing that I had
to look into what the heck these were. Time to Google it! (I just like
using that as a verb)
The glasses were designed to limit the chicken's field of vision to help calm their behavior. Chickens will peck at each other at the sight of blood and to establish hierarchy. causing harm and even death within a flock. The glasses make them more cautious, probably since it limits their field of vision.
Originally blinder glasses with various designs of straps to attach the glasses to their heads were used.
The next innovation in chicken glasses came with red or rose tinted hinged "sun"glasses to help disguise the sight of blood. These glasses were made to be held on the chicken's
beak with a cotter pin through the nostrils of the bird. They allowed a fuller forward field of vision for the chickens
as opposed to the blinder style. The sunglasses would swing out of the way when they looked down. The hinged glasses have not been manufactured for many years
and are now
considered a collector's item. The blinder glasses are still in use in some places. The cotter pin style glasses were banned in the UK around 1982 because of the pain caused to the birds. Today, plastic pinless clip on blinders are popular.  |
| Turkey |
A British newsreel from British Pathe, which is a great
For your amusement, an episode of What's My Line where the guest is a Chicken Glasses salesperson.
Also in my searching I came across this little Attack of the Chickens gem of an indie short from Small Time Pictures.
If only they'd had their chicken glasses on.
Bock, Bock
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