The Pecking Order

My chickens love to peck each other. They peck one another until their feathers come out. They will pick and pull on their back, wings, and neck feathers. They leave little bald spots of redness on each other. I don’t know why they do this. At first I thought it was from having a rooster and that caused the chickens to pick at each other. One of my friends has chickens and no rooster, and they don’t pull out feathers. This might also happen since I have different types of chickens and they pick on the odd one out. But, this does not make much sense because there is not a singular pecked chicken, they have all been missing feathers at one point or another.

I have a book called “the Forgotten Skills of Self-Sufficiency” which explains many factors for why chickens peck each other. One is that they my feel overcrowded within their space. Which may be true, my chickens do have ample room to walk the walk, but they might feel crowded inside the coop in the winter. Another reason this may happen is from introducing new chickens. I know I have had to re-stock some of my lost chickens at times. But none of my chickens have ever killed one another. Chickens die every once in a while, Friday one of my brown chickens died she was about five years old. This sucks but it happens. I am thinking it was just old age for her but my chickens have died in many different ways. One time we must have had a coyote or bobcat getting in and eating chickens, luckily that stopped. Finally, the last reason could be from having an aggressive chicken, such as a rooster. This is the best explanation I found and it is called the Pecking Order. Pecking is just a way of showing dominance and is also a way for chickens to pick bugs off their skin. This is even more common with one or more roosters. Were roosters may shun each other for dominance. King Crazy Chicken III is not so bad, his grandpa was the original crazy and he was definitely mean.

I will still look into expanding my chickens area for more comfort. I was already thinking of putting more room in the coop so during the winter the chickens don't feel stuffy inside. The week itself was not so eventful until the brown hen died, so now I will have to hatch one more from egg I think.

 

Work Cited

Warnock, Caleb. The Forgotten Skills of Self-sufficiency Used by the Mormon Pioneers. Springville, UT: Bonneville, 2011. Print.