How We Know What Chickens Are Saying

Why do you suppose we humans believe we know what chickens are saying when they make certain sounds? It’s because humans convey emotion using the same system of vocalizing as chickens.

The structure of any sound a chicken makes, or a human speaks, tells you something about the mood, or motivation, of the individual making the sound. Structure therefore provides a clue as to what a sound, or word, means. Sound structure involves four basic qualities:

• Intensity — loud or soft?

• Pitch — high or low?

• Tonality — strident or melodious?

• Rate — fast or slow?

The system of identifying the state of mind of a person, a chicken, or any warm blooded animal by the structure of its sounds follows well-defined motivation-structural rules. So, as it turns out, chickens use exactly the same motivation-structural rules humans use.

Pleasant Sounds

For both chickens and humans, brief, soft, repetitive, low-pitch notes are sounds of attraction and comfort. Think of a mother hen’s clucking.

Pleasure sounds usually begin low in pitch, rise, then end. An example is the soft irregular peeping chicks use to maintain contact with each other and their mother.

Sounds of pleasure might also go up and down like an inverted V, or chevron. Peeping chicks make such sounds when they’ve found food or are cozily nestled under their mother hen.

You can use the same motivation-structural rules to calm and comfort chicks in a brooder. When working with chicks, make only sounds that are low in pitch, brief, soft, and repetitive.

Distress Sounds

Loud, harsh, high-pitch sounds denote alarm. Newly hatched chicks inherently are frightened by sudden loud noises, such as those made by active children or a barking dog.

Sounds that start high and go lower indicate distress. A panicked chick separated from its mother gets her attention by sending out a series of loud peeps with descending frequency. High intensity distress calls have a whining quality caused by a longer high-pitch part before the pitch falls.

A shriek that is both harsh and rising in pitch symbolizes a state of fright. A continuous high-pitch sound indicates abject terror. It’s the unforgettable scream of a terrified chicken that’s being carried into the air by a hawk, or being whisked away in the mouth of a fox.

A low-pitch, harsh sound is a threatening sign of defense or aggression. A setting hen growls if you reach into her nest.

The harsher or more dissonant the sound, the more aggressive or unfriendly is the motivation behind it. A mild growl from a setting hen tells you she’s unhappy. A harsher growl may be accompanied by a skin-piercing peck.

Not only can you tell a chicken is distressed by the sounds it makes, but each sound indicates a specific cause of distress. Like other chicken keepers, when I’m in the yard and a chicken sounds the hawk alert, I reflexively look into the sky.

Confrontation Avoidance

The response to a sound of aggression is often a melodious or whistle-like note. That’s because rising pitch tends to be nonconfrontational — fearful or friendly. High-pitch baby-like sounds make an individual seem small and non-confrontational, thus reducing aggression directed toward that individual.

Humans often sound small or baby-like by using a high-pitch tone to avoid inducing fear. All 6,000 known human languages use motherese — also known as baby talk — when speaking to infants.

In male-dominated human cultures women tend to speak in a high-pitch baby-like voice to indicate their non-threatening status. Women in more feminist cultures tend to speak at a lower pitch to make themselves appear more authoritative.

The natural voice pitch of humans, and chickens, deepens with maturity. And males vocalize at a lower pitch than females. But not always.

As Erich Baeumer observed in his book Das “Dumme” Huhn (translation: The “Dumb” Chicken), hens sing in anticipation of laying. Mature roosters don’t sing, with one exception. A rooster, once defeated by a rival and later pursued by that rival, will sing discordantly.

Motivational Endpoints

The lowest harsh and highest tonal sounds are extreme motivational endpoints. Every sound in between depicts some mood between the two extremes. Most of the sounds chickens make are in between, because only rarely do chickens experience extreme moods during their normal daily routine.

The motivation rules governing chicken talk become most obvious in calls with the most variation. A pecked chicken’s startled squawk, for example, might have a clear tone if the pecked bird is low ranking. But it takes on a harsher tone if the pecked bird’s rank is less well established than the instigator’s. These language rules, followed by all vertebrates, are how we know what a chicken is saying — if we but take the time to listen.

This blog was written in collaboration with ornithologist Gene Morton, author of Animal Vocal Communication.