Chickens can be Really Bad Mother Cluckers

As I’m sure most already know, chickens are the closest living relative to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Apparently some research team stuck a long tail on a chicken sometime back and watched the way the bird moved to have an idea of how big, bad, T-Rex would have moved. Welcome to Jurassic Park?

No surprise then, that the chicken is basically a reptile – the scales replaced by feathers and possessing the mentality of a cold blooded killer/hunter, all wrapped up in a fluffy, seemingly docile package of feathers and crazy movements. Who could guess that these creatures would think nothing of ripping a mouse to shreds, or, in some cases, picking on one another to the death? 

When I’m down in their coop I’ll hear their noises that resemble growls, chirps, and downright noises that sound like they’ve come from the very depths of hades. I’ll watch as a group of hens pick quietly at scattered cracked corn one moment and then the next, look at their flock mate and peck at their eye. Growling as they do it. Chickens are just sometimes downright mean.

I’ve watched ruthless chasing from the current flock as the new birds are introduced and watched with horror as the newcomers huddle in a corner, terrified to make a move as their older counterparts size them up, hissing and threatening to take them down in a flash of beak.  It’s a game of roulette every time I have to introduce birds to the big flock and not something that I look forward to doing. It’s stressful for the birds, it’s stressful for me, but it’s a necessary part of flock keeping and one task that must be taken with a very watchful eye to ensure that the new birds make it to adulthood.

Surely you’ve heard the term “pecking order” and it is chickens that this phrase came from. There is an absolute hierarchy established amongst the flock and each bird knows its place in the group. The lead hen (or rooster), gets first dibs on good food, the best perching spots and the first access to the best dust bath sites. The others fall into their respective places and when a new bird or birds are introduced to the flock – it upsets that balance for a time. No one wants to be put on the low pole and so any new birds that are brought in are usually picked on sometimes to the point of their death. It’s barbaric, but that’s the chicken way. They are bad muther cluckers sometimes.

Unfortunately, recently, a friend who is new to chicken keeping found that out with a bird that was introduced to a flock of hens. All seemed well at first, but as the evening wore on – the established birds had enough of this intruder and brought him down. Sadly, he was found the next morning – having been sent off to the big nest in the sky.

I think of all of these things as I watch my birds peacefully peck around grass and grain on a warm afternoon. They seem so docile, so friendly, so scared, but pushed to the test and when it is broken down – they are really a force to be reckoned with. After all, isn’t it the T-Rex who ends up surviving in the movies? J