How to Tell When Chickens Are Stressed Out
Stress leads to changes in a chicken’s behavior, and prolonged stress reduces immunity to disease. When you are familiar with the way your chickens normally act, you can tell if your chickens are stressed out by observing these three basic types of change:
- Loose, watery droppings are a sign of stress. A typical example of loose droppings as a stress sign is when you suddenly grab a chicken and it reacts by pooping on you. Loose droppings may indicate something is wrong with the feed or water. Or they may mean your chickens are suffering from some digestive disorder.
- Labored breathing is another sign of stress. It can be the result of such stressful situations as crowding, panic, or high temperatures. Labored breathing may be a sign that the coop is too dusty or ammonia fumes are too strong. Or it may indicate the chickens are coming down with a respiratory disease.
- Changes in normal behavior or activity occur when chickens are stressed out. Veterinary ethologists, who study animal behavior and its relationship to health, organize the behavior of chickens into the following categories for observation purposes.
Reflex Behavior
Reflex behavior involves any automatic reaction. Examples are flinching or shying away from loud noises or sudden movement. A frightened chicken reflexively shakes its head from side to side. A chicken that doesn’t feel well may be slow to react to perceived danger.
Feeding Behavior
Feeding behavior includes both how often a chicken eats and drinks and how much it ingests. Under normal circumstances, a chicken visits feeders and drinkers often and eats or drinks a little at a time.
Stress usually makes a bird eat and drink less, although some diseases increase thirst. Abnormal feeding behaviors that require immediate management action to alleviate stress include feather picking, cannibalism, drinking excessive amounts of water, eating litter or soil, and egg eating.
Rest Patterns
Stress easily disturbs rest patterns. An example is restlessness at roosting time when a flock anticipates being bitten by external parasites that feed on chickens at night. Predators, especially rats, that routinely prowl beneath roosts at night can also make chickens nervous at roosting time.
Exploratory Behavior
Exploratory behavior involves investigating new things in the environment. Loss of interest by a chicken in its surroundings is a stress sign that may be an early indication of disease.
Stressed-out chickens tend to over react, often in the form of flightiness. But flightiness is relative, since some breeds naturally are more flighty than others
Body Activity
Body activity relates to motion, including wing flapping and traveling around the yard. A stressed-out chicken, for example, may pace up and down.
Pacing can indicate anxiety, as when a chicken finds itself on the wrong side of a fence. It may indication frustration, as when one rooster constantly harasses another. Or it may indicate boredom, as occurs in chickens that don’t take kindly to close confinement.
Grooming Activities
Grooming activities include head scratching, preening, mutual grooming, and dust bathing. A scruffy appearance indicates loss of interest in grooming behavior. It is a sign of stress and a common early sign of disease.
Sexual Behavior
Sexual behavior on the part of a hen largely involves crouching when a rooster puts his foot on her back in preparation for mating. Hens that are low in the pecking order typically crouch as a rooster nears, and are mated more often than other hens.
Sexual behavior on the part of a rooster involves chasing hens, courtship (pecking the ground, dancing in circles, and wing fluttering), and crowing. Crowing establishes the rooster’s location and warns off competitors, so it’s territorial as well as sexual.
Territorial Behavior
Territorialism involves aggressive behavior that allows chickens to maintain personal and territorial space. Crowding increases aggression, which increases stress.
Redirection is a common form of stress behavior in which a chicken suddenly shifts gears. An example is when two roosters are sparring and one suddenly starts preening or pecking the ground.
Abnormal territorial behavior includes unprovoked attacks on intruders, other chickens, or humans. It also includes refusing, or being unable, to move out of fear.
Parental Behavior
Parental behavior refers to the relationship between a hen and her chicks. A hen protects her chicks, leads them to feed and water, and communicates with them (and they with her) through vocalizations.
Abnormal parental behavior includes leaving the nest before the eggs hatch, which may be caused by mites attacking the hen. Abnormal behavior also includes a hen attacking her chicks when they hatch, or abandoning the chicks after they hatch.
Social Relations
Social relations mostly involve the pecking order. Chickens that are low in peck order get chased away from feeders, don’t get enough to eat, and don’t grow as well or lay as many eggs as those higher up.
A disruption in the peck order, for any reason, increases stress. Common situations that disturb the peck order are removing chickens from the flock and adding chickens to it.
Relationship to Humans
Relationship to humans starts with imprinting, which occurs in chicks during their first day of life. By the time a chick is three days old it starts experiencing fear. Developing a friendly relationship with chicks hatched at your place, therefore, is easier than developing a relationship with mail-order chicks or grown chickens.
Whether or not your chickens imprint on you, you can minimize stress by talking or singing softly when you move among them, so they can keep track of where you are. Move calmly and avoid abrupt broad gestures.
Long-Term Stress Behavior
Continuing stress that leads to long-term behavioral changes affects laying and seriously reduces a chicken’s resistance to disease. By noticing behavioral changes that indicate your chickens are stressed out, you can take early appropriate action to reduce the impact of potentially stressful situations.