What Is a Hen’s Egg Song?
Every time I hear cackling referred to as a hen’s egg song, I get a little confused. The many studies I’ve read about chicken sounds always refer to pre-laying hen sounds as singing. None refer to a hen’s post-lay cackle as a song. So what’s going on here?
Musical Sound
German physician Erich Baeumer was the first person to attempt to catalog the sounds chickens make. In his 1964 book with the tongue-in-cheek title of Das dumme Huhn (translation: The “Dumb” Chicken), he observes that hens sing in anticipation of laying.
Here’s the translated passage from the book (originally written in German): “Farm women refer to the gakeln of hens as singing. It is similar to human singing, but not that of songbirds. Through it the hen announces her readiness to lay, and expresses a wish to be let out or to be fed.”
So Baeumer compares a hen’s pre-laying sound to human singing. Then he describes the sound as musical:
“Whereas singing consists of elongated or punctuated musical sounds… the well-known cackle sounds sharper and more clipped. It signifies excitement.” In a paper published in the journal Ethology, Baeumer further described the post-laying cackle as a warning call. That doesn’t sound at all like singing.
As an aside, Baeumer mentions that occasionally a defeated cock will sing the pre-laying song. I once heard a similar sound made by a cockerel in the butcher pen. He sang his eerie song after he was the last cockerel left in the pen.
Low Frequency
In 1963, behavioral biologist Mark Konishi wrote in the journal Ethology that a hen typically makes the laying call before producing an egg. It consists of sustained sounds, with a low frequency range often including some harmonic frequencies.
Note that he describes the laying call as being in the low frequency range, like singing, not like a high-pitched cackle. He also refers to the sound as coming before egg laying, not afterward.
Contentment Notes
In 1987 Ornithologist Nicholas E. Collias wrote in The Vocal Repertoire of the Red Jungle Fowl: “Contentment notes by cocks or hens can often be induced by feeding, and particularly in the hen may develop into singing which consists of still longer notes uttered at a more rapid rate. Singing is probably the same call as the pre-laying call of the domestic hen, described by [Baeumer and Konishi].
Singing, it seems, equates with contentment. Cackling, on the other hand, aligns with danger.
Egg Song versus Laying Cackle
Singing is the sound of contented hens. They generally sing in anticipation of something good to come. Examples are being let out of the coop, being fed, or depositing the morning egg.
On the other hand, a hen issues the laying cackle after she lays and is leaving the nest. It’s tempting to think the hen is bragging about her egg. But the intent of the cackle is more likely to scare away any predator that might be lurking around. And also to put other chickens on notice that she may need help should a predator in fact be there. Supporting this suggestion is the fact that cackling is contagious.
Ironically, many people who designate a cackle as the egg song also make a point of mentioning that it sounds nothing like singing. So when (and why) did today’s chicken keepers forsake the melodic pre-lay singing and instead designate the post-laying warning cackle as the hen’s egg song?
I really love to try to figure out what my girls are trying to say..they’re all completely different (mixed group 14) about how they “sing” or not in regards to laying. I put them to bed, or rather, check them and close their hen door and say goodnight every night, give them a pat, and sometimes one or more gives a sort of trill, which I’ve always assumed was contentment, but I’m not sure. Before getting them, I thought they’d snuggle up for company at night, but, they mostly seem to be pretty bitchy towards each other instead, if you’ll forgive my language. I guess they don’t like not being able to see well. I find them to be endlessly fascinating.
Not all hens sing in the morning. And not all hens cackle after laying. As for snuggling, chickens that were raised together as chicks, especially those that are related (mother, offspring, siblings) tend to snuggle together more than chickens that are introduced to each other later in life.
I always wonder what my girls are trying to tell me. This article is very elucidating! I love your research and that you always go for the science, Gail!
My girls were all brought up together, they’re all super friendly. The only behavior that looks like snuggling at night is the less dominant girls responding to getting pecked will dip their heads and shoulders underneath the aggressors. I’ve noticed that some also love to get up in my lap and actually prefer a firm squeeze between my upper arm and chest, they’ll snuggle into a safe, warm space under my armpit. I was just surprised as a new owner last year how much jostling, pecking, and nitpicking goes on when they are settling for the night. I think it’s hilarious that on a two by four, even as adults, they think nothing of stepping directly on their neighbors’ backs and walking over each other to a different spot. I wish ppl could see how smart, observant, and affectionate they are, how subtle and incredibly quick their social interactions are.
Chickens are prey animals, and birds in general take pains to not draw attention to their nest and eggs. So I remain dubious about an explanation of the post-lay cackle as scaring away predators (wouldn’t it attract them)? Also, while cackling does seem contagious, chickens don’t typically help each other by presenting a common front to a predator, at least to my knowledge. Rather, they scatter, and the slow and/or unfortunate individual gets picked off. That said, I haven’t a better explanation for an egg cackle — and maybe other people have actually observed behaviors I have not.
Good points, but: 1. Wild birds lay eggs with the intent of hatching them. Most chickens lay many more eggs than they could or would hatch. So most of the time when a chicken lays an egg she is not in broody mode. 2. A hen or rooster cackles when startled by something, such as a sudden, unusual movement. It’s sort of a warning of potential danger, and is the same sound as the post-laying cackle. The rest of the chickens often pick up on the alert and start cackling, too. 3. Yes, the alert draws attention to the original cackler, but also serves the two-fold purpose of alerting a potentially lurking predator that it may have been seen, and also diffuses the predator’s attention to other cackling chickens. 4. Chickens generally scatter when they detect (or believe they have detected) an actual predator. The warning call for a spotted predator differs from a cackle alerting to the possibility of a potential predator. 5. We don’t really know what’s going on in a chicken’s head. All we can do is make an educated guess.
Good points all (especially number 5 🙂 ). I read in a reliable source (a study done some time back) that chicken alarm calls for terrestrial predators also vary from those from aerial. Smart birds. In any case, I have learned — slow, dumb human — to pay attention when my girls are alerting, as they are almost certainly sensing (or seeing) a threat I do not.
In addition..chickens are far removed from wild behavior. We as humans have forced them to live together in flocks, who knows what their behavior would be if released into the wild, or if they’d even survive. (The domesticated versions, that is..) Their current behaviors are from an artificially induced evolution in controlled settings, evolving to adapt to having food, shelter, ability to interact socially with other chickens and humans, and breeding all carefully controlled..