Chickens

About Chickens

©2004	Compassion Over Killing

When we think of chickens, most of us think of roosters crowing at dawn; hens scratching at the earth with downy chicks underfoot. We might even think of a taunt from a childhood bully.

But how much do we really know about chickens? Looking closer, these birds are revealed as complex, intelligent, and social animals.

We've likely heard the phrase "pecking order," but where did it come from? In nature, chickens live in stable social groups comprised of up to 30 other birds and, like dogs and other animals, they establish social hierarchies. The flock mates coordinate their activities, so they dust bathe, forage, rest, and roost together. The birds recognize each other by their facial features and prefer the company of those they know, avoiding chickens unfamiliar to them.

Chickens use their sensitive beaks like we use our hands—for exploring their surroundings, picking up items, feeding, and more. They forage (search for food) by scratching with their claws and pecking with their beaks more than 10,000 times in a single day.

Hens, or female chickens, have a strong need to nest. In nature, a hen follows an intricate process to build her nest. She first scratches a shallow hole in the earth and then reaches out to pick up twigs and leaves, which she drops onto her back. Then she settles back into the hole she dug and lets the materials fall off around the rim. She continues collecting and depositing twigs and leaves until her nest is complete.

The inability of egg-laying hens to nest in battery cages—tiny, barren wire enclosures standard on today’s egg factories—is the single greatest source of frustration for these caring mothers according to Dr. Ian Duncan, Chair in Animal Welfare in the Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and one of the world's foremost experts on chicken behavior and welfare.

These birds also form strong family ties. A mother hen begins bonding with her chicks before they are even born. She will turn her eggs as many as five times an hour and softly cluck to her unborn chicks, who will chirp back to her and to one another. After her chicks have hatched, the devoted mother dotes over her brood, teaching them what to eat, how to drink, where to roost, and how to avoid enemies. Young chicks separated from their mother huddle together at night for a couple of months, eventually lining themselves up on a perch and roosting like adults.

Chickens are intelligent animals and good problem-solvers. More advanced than young children, chickens possess the ability to understand that an object, when taken away and hidden, nevertheless continues to exist. And their communication skills are so developed that they use separate alarm calls depending on whether a predator is traveling by land or in the sky. Australian scientists recently discovered that some hens emit high-pitched sounds to signal they have found food. The more they prefer a particular food, the faster they "speak."

"Chickens show sophisticated social behavior," Dr. Joy Mench, Professor and Director of the Center for Animal Welfare at the University of California at Davis, "That's what a pecking order is all about. They can recognize more than a hundred other chickens and remember them. They have more than thirty types of vocalizations."

Finally, the childhood taunt "chicken" is inaccurate when it suggests cowardice. In the wild, a mother hen will threaten other hens who come within 20 feet of her chicks. Chickens will also fight with eagles and foxes to protect their kin.