A recently-hatched chicken with four legs on a farm in eastern China is perfectly edible, according to expert opinion.
Qilu Evening News of Shandong Province reported that the chicken was hatched on March 7 at a local chicken farm run by a woman whose father brought the animal to her attention.
The bird has a set of extra legs behind the usual pair. Forty neighbors and friends swarmed to the farm to see the mutant chicken and take photos, many of which ended up on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform.
(Sina Weibo)Though energetic in the morning, the chicken seemed drained later in the day, lying in its litter.
“It’s probably scared,” one netizen commented. “because its days are numbered.”
Cai Zhongfeng, director at a livestock station in Heze, Shandong Province, told Qilu Evening News that the chicken has four legs simply due to abnormal development and that consuming it would not be physically harmful.
The farm owner said she would not eat the chicken because it is undersized.
