Of the three pumpkins we carved, only one was suitable for chicken consumption. One was painted (my youngest insisted) and the other had some rot starting inside. The chickens were leery of the good pumpkin, not, I think, because of the carved skull, but because it weighed over 8 pounds! They have a similar fear of feed bags and buckets.

I had to remove the lid for the hens to realize the object was edible. Then they decided to resculpt the pumpkin from a skull into Micky Mouse. Huh.