Lu Yuanrong and his wife Shi Jinhua feed chicken at the courtyard of their house in Shangtang Village of Luxin Township in Wuxuan County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, June 17, 2020. Born in the 1970s, the disabled couple Lu Yuanrong and Shi Jinhua were registered as an impoverished household in 2015. (Xinhua/Cao Yiming)

A shop owner in Hailun, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, recently discovered that a hen he raised likes to eat screws, and is one kilogram heavier than its peers while showing no apparent abnormalities, media reported Monday.

The electrical maintenance shop owner, surnamed Song, bought a batch of chickens in July, and soon found that one of them had a craving for screws, while showing no abnormalities in its excrement or its health condition. 

The hen weighs three kilograms, which is one kilogram heavier than the others of the same age, Song said, Yishou Video reported.

The staff of the local animal husbandry bureau said the screws may have been dissolved by the acidic substance in the hen's body.

"I raise chickens every year and I have only found one iron-eating hen in all these past years," Song said.

Some netizens on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo expressed concerns that the hen may have a compulsive eating disorder, and needs to be treated accordingly.

Global Times