The Pecking Order 🐓

Chickens are very social creatures

They are flock birds and benefit from living in family groups. They prefer to live together and have a distinct hierarchical structure within their families and wider social circles. When we first think of chooks we immediately equate them with lots of lovely fresh eggs. We set up with all the necessary poultry keeping supplies: coop, feeder, drinker and feed. The truth is we give very little thought to the chooks themselves; what makes them tick, what put a smile on their beaks and their innate social networking skills. So we thought it prudent to delve a bit into ‘chicken wisdom’ and ‘chicken social etiquette’ and what makes them happy in life. We will also touch on how chickens have highly specialized sight, hearing and smell perceptions which assist them to communicate and interact with other flock members to create a rich, social chicken tapestry of life. Chickens are delightful creatures to keep and reward us humans in so many ways with food, friendship and ‘chicken therapy’ (de-stress after a busy day working just go talk to your chooks!) They teach us much about the simple joys in our fast moving, modern lives. So let’s explore the family life of the fowl.

Chicken Family
If we look at how chickens live in the wild (the jungle fowl) it is interesting to observe that they usually live in smallish groups consisting of a dominant rooster and one or more hens. Flocking together not only gives them social advantages but also allows for greater survival of the species.
In the breeding season the dominant rooster of each flock marks and defends his territory either alone or with an accompanying group of non-broody hens. Over the season as the hens lay clutches of eggs they eventually go broody. The rooster will assist each hen to locate and settle in a nesting site. In the domestic chicken this can be clearly observed when the rooster is found in the nesting boxes chatting softly to the hen and showing her where to nest and to lay.

Teenage Chickens
Each group of pre-pubescent youngsters stick together in their sibling groups and then as the season progresses and more broods of similar age emerge these teenage chickens re -group and hang out together in larger groups till the onset of sexual maturity. This flock mentality also helps to ensure better survival plus the youngsters (like us humans) enjoy the company of others. The young cockerels will eventually become sexually active and start to extend their range and as a result encroach on the borders of other established rooster territories. As the pullets reach sexual maturity they are increasingly chased by the young and inexperienced cockerels and this usually alerts a dominant rooster to their plight and so they indirectly seek the protection of a mature rooster and become part of his flock.

During the non-breeding season whilst the flock is moulting and building up their reserves for the new breeding season (and testosterone levels off a bit) flocks can inhabit overlapping home ranges with fixed hierarchies between neighbours. Ideally older hens will stick close by their dominant rooster and younger ones will range further afield. The younger and less dominant roosters will hang out on the periphery of flocks and lead more solitary lives and remain more vulnerable to predators.

Chicken Hierarchy

This social hierarchy is key to how chicken families and societies operate. We have come to call it the pecking order. It is a very important concept to understand and consider when keeping chickens and especially when purchasing new chickens to add to an existing flock. This pecking order works the same in layer flocks made up solely of hens. The pecking order is established through trial and depends on age and size to some degree. Young birds are often subjected to aggression as they come to learn the order within the flock. This aggression can be simply eye contact or in the form of face-to-face fighting or head and neck pecking. It can vary from mild to severe so best to give some thought to introducing new individuals to your home flock. Hierarchy can be lineal, for example, one hen can be very dominant over the rest. We witnessed this recently with a group of 13 Light Sussex cockerels where the top male totally dominated the other 12. He ruled the feeder and the hen house and would control them merely with his presence it seemed. The dominance was obvious as all the subordinate cockerels would pile head first into the corner in his presence. Once we removed him from the pen the old order collapsed and a new pecking order was set up. This took a few days to establish but at least it worked out to be a more non-lineal pecking order. This lineal ranking is not usually the norm. 

Most pecking orders are non-lineal which sometimes creates triangles where Bird A pecks on Bird B who in turn pecks on Bird C and Bird C pecks on Bird A. Once a pecking order has been established this is generally maintained through recognition of individual birds and their positions within the group. Ill-heath, removal of a bird/s, maturity will often be the main reasons to challenge the status quo. With each season the family group will change as the individuals within that group grow, mature and die and thus the hierarchy within the group change.

Chicken Intelligence

In our western culture we have come to associate stupidity with chickens. We use the term ‘bird brain’ to mean dim-witted or foolish. This is a term only recently used since the 1920’s when man started to farm poultry on a mass scale for eggs and meat. We have taken Gallus Gallus Domesticus (the domestic chicken) and turned it into the most exploited and least respected of all avian species. For centuries across many cultures roosters and hens have been respected, admired and revered for their abilities to guard, protect, nurture and communicate with each other. These are all the skills seen within a highly structured intelligent society and ones we aspire to within our own human society.
Yes chickens like most birds have small sized brains but this difference in size does not mean that because it is small it cannot be intelligent or aware. Who are we to say that bird brains are inferior just because they are smaller than ours? Birds may process information in different ways to us and in other locations to us and the evidence is obvious to those that keep chickens and have witnessed the complex family and social behaviours of our feathered friends.

Chicken Memory

Chickens also have excellent memories. This is an essential requirement for them to survive within their social groups. Facial recognition is key. They can memorize up to 200 other chicken individuals on facial features, plumage and stance and even after a few months of separation. They also recognise (us) humans, the clothes we wear and items we might carry (food bucket, catching net). They memorise the house they live in, their place on the perch, their friends and foes, their territory and their daily routine. Their daily routine becomes habit and you can set your watch on it. If you feed you birds at set times then you will know what we are talking about! In fact chicken memory is so well imprinted in chicken brains that it is hard to undo learned behaviour/s. That is why it is important when you take new birds home to shut them in their new house for at least a week so they can get to recognise and memorise all their new flatmates and their new accommodation. So when let out to free range they will return to what they know is familiar (their new family) and what has become their home. On the other hand that memory becomes so ingrained that if you move them to another house not far away and let the out the next day they will return to their old house. It will take time and new imprinting to train to their new house. Make changes slowly when moving chickens, keep them non the same feed, take familiar feed/water containers to new houses and remember too much change can stress birds. Stress can kill birds. Also bad habits like egg eating, roosting in nest boxes and feather pecking once learnt as behaviours are hard to unlearn. So best to avoid them learning these bad habits in the first place.

Some behaviours are instinctive like the desire and need to peck for food from day one and the nurturing of young but most other behaviours are learned. Chickens that have not learned from their mothers to scratch and dig for worms are not inclined seek out worms. Chickens that are not used to eating table or garden scraps will generally show little interest in them. Feed a scratch treat to chooks that know and love it and they will mob you for it. Wheat or maize treats feed out to chooks that have never had it before will not know what to do with it.. but they will soon learn over time to love it. So with chickens everything is essentially becomes a familiar and learned behaviour and once imprinted becomes part of their daily routine.
We should coin a new phrase…’a memory like a chicken!’

Chicken Vision

Chickens with their highly specialized visual, auditory and olfactory perceptions are able to instantly recognise friends (members from the same flock) and foes (foreign chickens, predators, threatening objects and situations.) They can process all this information in what we call a pea-sized brain. Chickens have excellent hearing and an auditory frequency range of 15-10,000 HZ. Hearing is vital to chickens as they rely on ‘acoustic interactions’ as one way of communicating with each other and the rest of the flock.

Vision is also highly specialized. Both eyes weigh together as much as the brain. Chickens have the ability to see detail clearly (grains of wheat on the ground) and at the same time have a panoramic view of the more distant environment in order to detect movement or danger. So they can easily switch from lateral to frontal viewing as their distance from an object decreases. As they use each eye independently they are able to swap between eyes and focus with each eye on a different distance. They see in full-spectrum colour vision. Chickens also demonstrate lateralisation of the brain. So when watching (with both human eyes!) our dominant rooster do his ‘titbitting’ (a food related display to call hens over to join him in a nice morsel of food) he will be using his right eye (left brain) to spot the feed and his left eye (right brain) will be watching for overhead predators. He will attack with his left eye (right brain) when viewing a foe.

Roosters Rule!

The problem with males is that they want to gain supremacy and be the alpha male (sound familiar!) It is all about being the dominant rooster as the main man gets the girl(s)! Roosters are generally only kept to complete a family unit, for breeding or for fattening for the table. So keeping more than one requires some careful management. Here at Appletons we need to grow many of our young cockerels on to select for breeding. We grow on our young cockerels in small groups and find that those that have been hatched and raised together (similar size and age) do best. We raise and keep similar breeds together. For example Sussex cockerels grow fast, feather quickly and tend to be dominant in nature so best not kept in the same pen as the more gentle, less confrontational cockerels like Faverolles or Croad Langshans . Neither do we raise light breed cockerels alongside heavy breed cockerels. Allow plenty of room in bachelor pads so the young males have the space to move away from each other. The larger the available range the more the boys will occupy themselves foraging and the less obsessed they will be with fighting. Add obstacles (bushes/branches/drums /boards) to the run. These obstacles offer less dominant cockerels places to hide and avoid the more dominant cockerels. Low perches in the run also offer some escape for young subordinate birds as a place to jump up if chased. Have more than one feed station so dominant cockerels do not rule the feeders.Keep an eye open for lineal hierarchy one rooster dominates all and watch out for gang mentality where groups of roosters corner and beat up subordinate cockerels. Best to remove any roosters that are bullied otherwise death can quickly ensue. Boys from bachelor groups will always bare battle scars. If wanting to grow on cockerels for showing they will need to be kept individually. Understanding how male chickens think and interact with each other goes a long way to better management.