{"id":12165,"date":"2024-05-28T19:30:17","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T19:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/used82.com\/?p=12165"},"modified":"2024-05-28T19:30:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T19:30:17","slug":"miracle-headless-chicken-lived-for-18-months-despite-being-struck-with-axe-in-slaughter-attempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/used82.com\/?p=12165","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Miracle\u2019 headless chicken lived for 18 months despite being struck with axe in slaughter attempt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Mike the Headless Chicken survived without a head for a whopping 18 months<\/h2>\n

Running around ‘like a headless chicken’ may be synonymous with a chaotic situation, but one chicken managed it for a surprising amount of time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mike the Headless\u00a0Chicken<\/a>\u00a0was just Mike the Chicken when he was taken off on a trip instantly triggering for anyone who has seen\u00a0Chicken Run<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But unlike the ill-fated Edwina from the classic animated\u00a0movie<\/a>, RIP Edwina, Mike survived being taken to ‘the chop’.<\/p>\n

On September 10 1945, farmer Lloyd Olsen from Colorado in the\u00a0US<\/a>\u00a0had been sent out into the yard to bring back a chicken for\u00a0dinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Olsen chose Mike, a Wyandotte chicken who was around five and a half months old at the time.<\/p>\n

But Olsen was left shocked when Mike was still alive, despite having his head cut off with an axe.<\/p>\n

While a chicken can keep moving without a head as the nerves continue making the muscles contract, we’re talking a matter of seconds or maybe minutes at a push.<\/p>\n

Miracle Mike went on to live significantly longer than that.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Mike<\/div>\n

Mike poses with his head. (X \/ @Morbidful)<\/cite><\/div>\n

When he noticed that Mike simply was not shuffling off to chicken heaven, Olsen started to feed him a mixture of milk and water using an eyedropper, as well as odd bits of corn and worms.<\/p>\n

For his part, Mike continued to act more or less like a normal chicken.<\/p>\n

The bird still tried to preen his feathers, scratch and peck for food, and even to crow.<\/p>\n

Though this ‘crowing’ ended up sounding like a gross gurgling sound.<\/p>\n

Mike the Headless Chicken went on to become a popular sideshow attraction.<\/p>\n

This included going on tour with other ‘anomalies’, and being photographed for magazines.<\/p>\n

At the height of his fame, Mike’s\u00a0entertainment<\/a>\u00a0value saw his owner raking in a whopping\u00a0$4,500<\/a>\u00a0a month, more than $72,000 a month in 2024.<\/p>\n

Not bad for a headless chicken.<\/p>\n

Mike’s career came to an end when he choked to death on a corn kernel in 1947, though his owners claimed they sold him.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Olsen<\/div>\n

Olsen fed Mike milk and water with an eyedropper. (X\/@Morbidful)<\/cite><\/div>\n

So how did Mike survive so long?<\/p>\n

One explanation was that Olsen’s axe stroke somehow missed Mike’s jugular vein, which would explain why he didn’t bleed out in the short term.<\/p>\n

But what about still acting like a chicken?<\/p>\n

Despite most of Mike’s head being severed, his brainstem and one ear, located at the back of his head, survived intact enough to keep him going.<\/p>\n

This contained the bits of the brain which maintained homeostasis, and combined with separate balance organs located in other parts of a chicken’s body, Mike could balance and walk.<\/p>\n

To this day, Colorado still holds a ‘Mike the Headless Chicken Day’.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike the Headless Chicken survived without a head for a whopping 18 months Running around…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":68,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/used82.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}