Scratching for social interaction and bonding with humansĬhickens will also start to perform these behaviors (scratching, preening, resting, bathing) next to (or even on top of) human caretakers who spend a lot of time with them. As your chickens become more and more familiar with you and start to trust you, you will find them implementing these behaviors closer and closer to you. Finally, many will do them right next to you, close enough for you to touch them. Relationships are built and maintained through participation in scratching and other daily behaviors with the flock. They exhibit strong preferences for the other individuals with whom they perform these activities, and some show distress behavior if one of their flock mates is removed. These activities are some of the major ways that chickens interact and bond with each other. Chickens form strong ties during these daily performances. If one chicken starts dust bathing, others will come join her. If one starts preening, a bunch will follow suit. They preen together, bathe together, rest together, and, yes, scratch together. All of these activities are not just necessary for chicken health but are social activities. If you’ve ever taken the time to really observe a flock, they move around together in groups all day, softly clucking and seemingly chatting to each other. Scratching for social interaction and bonding with other chickensĪn often overlooked purpose for scratching behavior in chickens is social interaction and bonding. Chickens are highly social animals. It looked as though he was trying to show the girls that he had found a good place for them to nest. He would scratch around in the nest boxes and lay down in an egg laying position. As the pullets began approaching the age of lay, one of my roosters, Perly, would hop in and out of the nest boxes making the same sounds he makes when calling the hens over to food. I first witnessed this with my first flock of chickens. In fact, even roosters will display scratching behaviors in nesting sites. The purpose of this behavior is to get the nesting material in a position that’s comfortable to them and that will also keep their eggs (and any others’ eggs sitting in the nest box) beneath their bodies in the ideal position for incubation. They exhibit this behavior while laying eggs even if they have no intention of incubating the eggs. Some of them will get up several times during the laying process to scratch the bedding around some more. They also tend to scratch around in the coop nest boxes before laying an egg. Scratching for nest buildingĬhickens will also exhibit scratching behavior when either building a nest or settling into one. If they are building a nest outside, they will scratch around on the ground until they make a comfortable spot to lay in (often lining it with grass and feathers). This may take several hours, and they may work on and off for several days to get the dust bath spot just right. However, if there is no loose dirt (or other sediment-sized medium) available, chickens will scratch around on hard ground until they have scratched up enough loose dirt for a bath. Pictured here is my rooster, Champ, enjoying a dust bath.Ĭhickens will usually choose to dust bathe in loose dirt and may scratch around in it a bit before settling in for the full body dirt treatment. Scratching for dust bath prepĪnother important purpose of scratching the ground is dust bath preparation. A dust bath is a chicken’s means of keeping his feathers in good condition and protecting himself against external parasites like mites and lice. To take a dust bath, a chicken will roll around in the dirt, rub parts of his body on the dirt, and throw dirt all over himself. Scratching was their means of unearthing this grub. Free-range chickens (and their wild brethren, the jungle fowl) still enjoy this foraging practice today. Most of what these birds ate, such as insects and seeds, was found just beneath the ground surface. Scratching behavior is instinctual in chickens because it was essential for the survival of their non-domestic ancestors. Similarly, one of the first things rescued battery hens will do when they are allowed to venture outdoors is scratch the ground, despite never having witnessed this behavior. Whenever I bring day old chicks home from a local hatchery, the first thing they do when I put them in their brooder is climb onto the food container and scratch around in it. They do this before ever witnessing another chicken do it. Scratching the ground is a behavior that is innate to chickens.
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