Chicken Speak 3 - The Food of Love - How Poultry Express Emotion Through Food

"If music be the food of love play on,

 Give me excess of it:..."

 Twelfth Night or What You Will
 Act 1, Scene 1

Duke Orsino's reference may fit his mood but I have never found chickens to be particularly swayed by music, particularly my singing. I have however, reasoned over the years that food is the food of love for our birds. Below, Lucky and Co take a postprandial siesta.

For over two decades I’ve been observing the poultry in the garden and noting the marked changes in behaviour and language. This in particular as the flock has expanded and split into smaller sub sets and the garden has transformed into and flourished as a forest. I have always found it fascinating that our birds organised themselves within the 1000m² using the ‘tools’ with which we had sometimes inadvertently provided them. They achieved this using our boundaries, both architectural and planted, to designate territories, achieve extra space, create free movement through leafy corridors and access alternative foraging grounds. Examples of these are; hedges and trees, greenhouses and hen house roofs, rose arches, wilderness areas, pergolas and climbing plants.

To support and provide some ‘academic’ weight to my ideas about what has happened to my birds and how they have changed over the years, I study all the fieldwork and research I can find on the various forms of my poultry’s wild cousins, the Jungle fowl. Most of these studies took place prior to the latter part of the 20^th century when there still existed significant numbers of Jungle fowl, living in remote areas and untouched by by both man’s physical intervention into their domain and the propinquity and thus cross-breeding with domestic poultry.

In this article I want to look at the way in which this return to the wild has impacted upon feeding behaviour and in particular the idea of food as an expression of love and care between parent and young and potential partners, although in the latter this sometimes involves duplicity in the male! To this end, I will include the links I've used from academic research, with which to contrast and compare my own observations. The references can be found in the footnotes at the end of this article for those of you who would like to follow them up.

(Above image:  Red Junglefowl G. g. gallus Top Right)

An interesting and certainly seminal work in the field of the behaviour surrounding foraging and feeding is 'Parental and Courtship Feeding in the Red Jungle Fowl'. This was a study carried out by Allen W. Stokes in the late 60's and published in 1971. It is highly appropriate to contrast and compare this work with my own observations because unlike other earlier studies it was carried out within a zoo, San Diego to be precise but on a 'semi-domesticated' but unconfined population of 222 Red Junglefowl. In the same way my birds, could have left our garden at any time, these Junglefowl chose to remain within the designated 40 hectares and as with my birds, divided themselves into small groups or flocks. Interestingly the population was almost equally divided between male and female but in contrast to my hens, who if left to their own devices will produce two hatches per year, the Red Junglefowl produced only one brood, with peak hatching in April. My hens follow the weather and thus the food availability. This year for example, when the early Spring weather was particularly wet and unseasonably cold, my birds didn't nest and sit until Summer.

Parental Feeding

Similar to my birds, the San Diego Red Junglefowl lived on a wild foraged diet but with the addition of food provided by the keepers. However a noted difference with the wild populations was flock density, as observed by noted field biologists and researchers, Nicholas and Elsie Collias in their comprehensive study carried out in India in 1963,. This in my mind, would have a significant effect on feeding behaviours. In the the zoo, for example the ratio was 555 birds per 100 hectares  whereas in the Collias study in the Siwalik Hills, this was 6 birds per 100 hectares!

So let's have a look at some of the observations from the paper produced by Stokes:-

'The young gallinaceous birds are precocial but they need help from one or both parents to obtain food during their first few weeks. Typically the parent locates food and behaves in such a way that the young will get it. The parent may let the chick take a morsel from its beak, drop the food in front of the chick or use specific calls to alert the chick to the presence of the food. All these behaviour patterns I include under the term parental feeding.'

From my observation of my birds, I would suggest that parental feeding  in captivity and also through selective breeding has changed from the wild, although not in totality. For, example, I've observed several hens who were still calling chicks to feed many months after they needed what Stokes has seen as an initial and transitory behaviour. I've even had a specific hen, 'Dorothy (see below left), a Wyandotte cross and I might add one that was particularly fond of food prior to being a mother, who was still calling her 'chicks' at a year old. She did this whenever she quite obviously recognised them as hers as she came upon them in the garden. 

Interestingly enough one of her chicks a Sicilian Buttercup cockerel known as 'Rex' (also in the image left), became one of our most caring males ever. Feisty, dominant and regal by nature, in line with his 'crown' comb. he sometimes needed to be separated from the rest of the flock at mealtimes but he was putty in the hands of small chicks, who would squeeze through the mesh of his feeding area to be with him, whereupon he would let them eat all his food without a murmur.

In the wild, particularly in a jungle environment, where food would be abundant, it would be easy for a chick to forage/hunt and be successful but in a garden, albeit a forest garden wherein it is still often possible to forage in peace, there is always the potential for a prize invertebrate to be snatched. Particularly whilst a chick is breaking it into  bite-size pieces. To this end I have found mother hens remove a large worm or earwig from a small chick and break it up and no one in their right mind takes food from a mother hen. I've also seen a mother, when the invertebrate has been provided by her or through her, me; again break up the prey and divide it between her chicks.

I am also of the belief, that in feeding by mouth, the hen provides essential dietary enzymes and bacteria to the chick.  I believe the study of gut flora and its relationship to both physical and mental health being comparatively recent, this is something that may not have been considered by these authors. 

Similarly, I have observed joint parental feeding of chicks in my flocks, though rarely by mouth from the male and as the forest has developed the frequency of co-parenting by both male and female behaviour has too, including males helping chicks to roost and keeping them warm at night.

Stokes was very precise in his assessment of how the Redjungle fowl brooded their chicks, he gave exact timelines and detailed stages to parental behaviour:-

'During their first few days after hatching jungle fowl chicks remained within a meter of the hen. When foraging the hen was ever on the move. She shifted the litter with a side- ways sweep of her beak and scratched with her feet. When she found a suitable piece of food during these first days she picked it up, held it above or in front of the chick, and waited until it took the morsel from her beak. In good foraging areas she found food every few seconds. This movement of the beak near the chicks attracted their attention, and they soon became alert to her motions. At this stage the chicks were so close to the hen she needed to move only her head to give them the food. In a week the chicks started to forage farther from the hen. Then when she located food she sometimes carried the morsel a few steps to the chick and let it take the food from her beak or dropped it in front of the chick..........At 8 to 10 weeks the chicks became fairly independent of the hen and vice versa; when given a worm the hen at this stage merely ate it, without calls or head movements.'

I've never observed any of my hens or cockerels presenting the exact same parenting behaviour timelines as he observed in the Red Junglefowl but then my poultry are from diverse roots, being bantams and standard birds from various heritage breeds and their crosses. For example, with my Sebright bonded pair, 'Dorabella' and 'Orlando' with their chick 'Mouse', the former followed a pattern of motherhood, which is often cited as classic to this breed, with Dorabella abandoning Mouse at four weeks old. On the day this happened the clever chick flew up and climbed high into a tree, shouting in a loud voice until I arrived whereupon, we mutually decided that I was now to be 'Mummy'. However, although Dorabella turned out to be lacking in long-haul maternalism, she made the most exquisite nest of any hen I have ever bred before or since. Not only was it beautifully and intricately woven into a ring doughnut shape but the design was not purely aesthetic. After laying each egg she made a hole in the wall of the 'doughnut' and buried the egg within. This meant not only that the eggs remained hidden and secure but each time she produced another egg the clutch would not be potentially affected by her body heat. Therefore and as expected, from the little we know of its origins, the Sebright proves a complex bird, including such in  'wild' behaviours as nest building and monogamy.

The other interesting aspect of parental feeding I've observed with my birds, is that the association of feeding and loving within their natures is so strong that it doesn't matter whose chick(s) you present to a broody or mother hen. They will nurture that baby as if it was there own. Pearl here even adopted a higher vocal range, almost a duck-like quack, when calling them to feed!

Courtship Feeding

'In many galliforms (Stokes & Williams, MS) the male may perform somewhat similar feeding behaviour toward the hen as part of his courtship. This is commonly called “tidbitting” (Domm, 1927) from the fact that the cock often displays with choice morsels.'

I would add that the lazy male will also unscrupulously exhibit the same behaviour with a stick, leaf or piece debris in my experience, particularly the juvenile male. Furthermore, this tidbitting behaviour is often accompanied by a circular 'Paso Doble' movement with the wing, which puts me in mind of the the perhaps now defunct human courtship behaviour of taking a woman out to a 'dinner and dance'.  Experienced hens however are very much up on this behaviour and it is only the shy and trusting giddy young hens who fall for it! 

Above: Close encounters of a dangerous kind, wherein our rehomed Silkie, Scott discovers that tidbitting a broody and showing her your dance steps isn't a very healthy idea. Note Chickles's fanned tail, raised crest and angry stance, a classic broody hen body language that we refer to here as 'lyre bird'. 

Here's Bubble (left) giving us the full-blown version.

 

I would suggest based on observation that there exists a very strong dominance element involved in the meaning of the dance step in tidbitting. I've witnessed this many times, when the dance is involved with food calling or as a stand-alone behaviour involving young males trying to express dominance over each other and also with hens who are super-dominant and exhibit crowing. These all involve the lowered wing 'Paso Doble' movement which encircles and seems to 'gather-in' the targeted bird. Similarly this 'rounding up' of an individual bird or several birds is often exhibited in the evening by a dominant bird to get the flock to go to roost. So under the heading of 'tidbitting' and in particular with  'dancing' there seems to be a more complex message of courtship and dominance or  purely courtship or purely dominance and this is where, I believe only a bird and moreover one of the flock is aware of what is actually being communicated. Just as human groups and families have language that is unique to themselves, involving shared experiences and references, such as from common incidents, meetings, sayings, books and films, which would be uncomprehensible to those outside the circle. To my mind all we humans can ever really do is attempt to understand the meanings but allow that nuances exist. This is something I will explore further in the next episode of 'Chicken Speak'.

The screenshot above shows a small group of 5 hens, a dominant Cochin and two younger males (top right). Initiated  by the White cockerel, the two males have been sparring throughout my observation of them, the White cokerel has been rebuffed both by the Black and Gold and by the Cochin until finally and as if to end the duel, the Gold and Black cockerel dances fully around the White cockerel with the 'Paso Doble' 'lowered wing' movement I described earlier. I'm postulating that this is a linguistic signal to the whole group but not necessarily carrying the same message. To the Cochin, I'll suggest it warns of a power struggle to come, to the hens, it offers a 'showing-off' exhibition of a potential mate and to each other, the males jostle for position within the group. Interestingly it also takes place around group feeding where I have just put down some pruned rose branches for them to eat.  You will see this sequence much more clearly included in the film below.

All the above involve dynamic elements in their execution, including ritualistic movements and vocals, so here's the film version for you to experience these wonderful 'chicken linguistics in action:

Thanks for dropping by and do feel free to share experiences or ask for further information in the comment section. If you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it with your family and friends, on social media and also maybe about joining this blog and/or subscribing to my Youtube, Odysee  or BitChute Channel or even supporting us on Patreon or

It all helps to keep me going!

Until next time, all the very best from sunny Normandie! 

Sue

A couple of useful references: 

Stokes A.W.,  1972  Parental and Courtship Feeding in Red Jungle Fowl,  The Auk, 88: 21-29 

Collias, N. E., &  E. C. Collias. 1967  A Field Study of the Red Jungle Fowl in North-Central India,  The Condor, 69, 4 

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© 2022 Sue Cross

Chicken Speak Part 2. Mothers and Chicks in Conversation food - distrust, urgency, love and distress

This is an on-going series of sounds and body language which I have recorded over many months. I'm hoping it will illustrate, for example, that there is more to chicken speak than just; 'Good Morning - All's well', 'Good Afternoon - All's well' and the seemingly similar but motivationally different, loving actions of a mother to her chicks and the quasi-chivalry of the male. In this section I also want to explore a secondary but most import consideration; viz., who is talking to whom and why.

With the domestication of birds, something else must have entered their language, another element which was not there in the wild, namely us. Our poultry not only have themselves, the flock and other wild birds to listen to and communicate with but they have also had to consider how we are inextricably linked into the process of their daily lives.

Bird to Human Non-vocal Communication

A soon as we started to keep fantails, or rather had them thrust upon us, (I thought I was rehoming a Frizzle but had to take five fantails and a dove as well), I realised that pigeons communicate very directly to humans through body language. Our fantails have a very fine idea of hierarchy, seeing the human as an arbitrator, whereas I always get the idea that my chickens see me as a rather obtuse individual who needs continual reminders.

I call this 'Ready for the Off' as I feel sure they can read French!

I checked with friends who keep pigeons and they have experienced the same communication pattern. In times of dispute or need, an individual pigeon, who may be sent, for all I'm aware as a representative aka spokesfantail of the group, will fly down from the dovecote and knock on the window with its beak. It will then stare into the kitchen until I come and find out what is wrong. This is usually a case of a problem bird, stealing nesting material or trying to evict another bird from its pigeon hole. For more mundane matters, such as needing more food, water or oyster shell, a fantail will come up to me, block my path and stare with telepathic intensity until I hopefully divine or at least go and find out, what is wrong. Interestingly enough pigeons use vocal language very sparingly, as do doves. In my experience it seems for the exclusive use of babies communicating their needs to parents, for courtship and defence.

Pigeons are supposed to have highly advanced thought processes, which is why they have had a long and for them a not particularly pleasant association with man and his wars. If you search for pigeons and their role in the World Wars you will find some incredible tales of trained carrier pigeons and to what lengths they will go to complete a designated task. Pigeons have been used in many aspects of human life, including communication, carrying both information and light freight; such as medicines and blood samples, in sports such as pigeon racing and of course in entertainment; magic acts. Pigeons can also comprehend quite difficult concepts, e.g., MSR (mirror self-recognition). Maybe therefore, they have decided that it is foolish to waste words on a human, when staring until the latter gets so unnerved as to do something, will serve. 

The Pigeon photographers of  Dresden c.1907 and a fine example of their photography made into picture postcards and sold at the 1909 International Photographic Exhibition.

A Tale of Two Mothers - non-typical behaviours and vocalisations

Situations arise from time to time which bring to my notice new 'words' and or phrases in the chicken vocabulary. It is useful to analyse these sounds and the accompanying body language, as they help in mutual understanding and enable us to troubleshoot potentially difficult situations. 

New Mother Communicating Extreme Distrust

The following sound I have heard only once before, it is rare and I've only heard it from another mother hen. I can only describe it as a sob, it comes deep from within the bird and I dare anyone who cares about their flock to be unmoved by it. It also only seems to happen when I am in close proximity to the bird and this factor coupled with the nature of the communication, seems to clearly indicate to me that the answer to my above question; 'to whom', is, 'to me'.

If you compare the pattern of sounds for the 'sob' as recorded on a specific occasion, you will see here as Midnight comes through the door of the house and sees her chicks are safe, the length of the phrase and its volume begin to diminish. I recorded these sounds after she was beginning to get more accustomed to me. When she started with this behaviour and vocalisation it was far too difficult to film. Now I can hear her voice as much calmer and holding her at the time, I could feel the full emotion of the tremor that went through her as she made these sounds. As I say in the film, it doesn't do much for your confidence as a chicken keeper!

The case study of itself is interesting. The mother hen 'Midnight' was not hatched here. She is in fact the offspring of a couple I sold several years ago to my neighbour, to be given as a Birthday present to their son who was starting up a flock. In fact this hen is the exact, pardon the pun, carbon copy of her mother/grandmother and has the dramatic possibilities of her magnificent Ardenner cross frizzled father/grandfather (left). The hen and her sister were returned to my neighbour last year after a visit from the fox had wiped out the rest of the flock. These two hens, not surprisingly were very wild. They spent the first day in the tall trees of the hedge between our gardens and then the next morning descended on our side of the fence and have been here ever since. They have remained a shadowy presence, both being jet black and well-camouflaged by the dense undergrowth of the orchard part of our forest garden. It took them six months to come to eat at the plates whilst we were still in sight. Recently, Midnight found a clutch of eggs or rather laid them, in an old cold-frame. They were well on their way to hatching when I found her.

 If the mother doesn't trust you, she will imprint that distrust onto the chicks!

Since I lost two hens in similar circumstances to a predator a couple of years back, now when I find a sitting hen I bring her into the house. There is usually a single return back-to-base after being let out the first morning after being moved. Thereon in the hen remembers and contents herself with sitting in the house to finish the hatch in comfort and security. Not so Midnight, she insisted on sitting in the cold frame, so I was obliged to return her and the eggs to it every morning and so I guessed we were in for a bumpy ride. Once the chicks started to hatch and despite her very vocal and demonstrative pecking protest, I removed her into the house. I took her out each day with the chicks to an enclosed run in the garden. Unlike my other two hens, who had hatched chicks around the same time, I could not trust her to free-range during the day and return at night. Every evening, I brought her in under protest, sobbing at me as I put the wild and fearful Midnight-imprinted chicks into a box to bring them in. Combined with this vocalisation, she was physically and viciously pecking me the whole time I carried her down the garden. The pecking (though I protected my arms!) lasted for three weeks and the sobbing still happens now and again but it has recently reduced to one single sob and I'm sure it means 'I've still got my eye on you'. Ironically, her fearful chicks now jump onto my shoulder, feet and hands and Midnight jumps up onto the run to be picked up for the journey home. To me what was going on here is all about trust. My hen was communicating directly to me that she neither knew me, nor had confidence in my actions and that my removal of the chicks from her immediate vicinity was a predatory and permanent action on my part. The sob seemed to me, to convey loss, in response to this I took the specific action you will see in the film. Furthermore,  in comparison to my other two mothers both of whom know me and will have communicated this to their chicks, the babies with Midnight are now a lot more trusting and affectionate than those of the other two hatches. It is as if having passed through fire together, we have come to a better understanding of both our characters and dispositions. 

Baby sitter needed NOW. Mother hen and her expressive body language

As I mentioned above I had three hatches of chicks in the garden this year, the second one was to a lovely but determined cuckoo coloured hen, who is called Cuckoodora, she had a big, covert hatch last year so this Spring I kept her under surveillance, although she still managed to hatch three chicks! One of the serious problems facing a Mother hen is if she comes on to lay whilst she is still brooding chicks. For most hens there are two options, the chicks are taken with the hen and sit outside the nest box where they can be heard cheeping mournfully, so still in communication, or they are taken right into the nest box and sit with the hen whilst she lays. Here (above), Snow White takes two month-old Chickles into the nest box as she lays an egg. It is a tender moment (included in the coming film), as she actually covers her chick with her wing as she lays and Chickles snuggles underneath her. However, when your chicks are still small and your usual nesting site involves negotiating steps into an outbuilding and then flying to the top of a 1.5 metre straw bag, you have to think about some other options. It was when we were sitting comfortably having a very English cup of afternoon tea and watching an old black and white film that Cuckoodora hurled herself at the back door. She had done this the day before with Andy in the house and he thinking she wanted food, had gone out to feed everyone earlier than usual.  However,  the morning after this event, I had found that she had laid an egg overnight in the cardboard box she sleeps in with her chicks. The next day I decided to film her just to show that the action goes with the hen's usual vocalisation when looking for a nesting site and showing intention to lay. It is no doubt something chicken-keepers are familiar with but not usually accompanied with such violent action.

Cuckoodora not only needed the sleeping box to lay her egg but for that and a few subsequent days she also needed the chicks to be in it with her. Again this communication was with a human, she was telling me she wanted to lay but there was a problem, she wanted to know the babies were safe. She mixed vocalisation with action and I find this fascinating as she knew where to come, whom to ask and that she also trusted me to work out what she wanted. There was also a further example of communication this time to the chicks as she talks to them as she is making the nest:-



For ease of listening, I have amplified the particular sections when she is making her 'nesting' sounds and now you can almost hear a turkey-type vocalisation. In the film, you will also see her as above check out the surroundings of the box to make sure it is safe. I have seen this action over and over again with mother hens checking perimeters of a given space whether a run or a box, always with an eye to the safety of their brood. 

All alone but together - the trio include identical twins except that one (obscured) is a frizzle!

Shortly afterwards Cuckoodora left the chicks but she still comes down here to the house and repeats the action when she wants to lay. In order not to get another covert hatch, I have rewarded her each day with something nice to eat after laying, however this recently backfired on me, when she came down really early one morning and just sat in the box for a few minutes and then jumped out, obviously she thought she could get the food without the egg!

These are but a few examples of the expressive language of hens, I have so much more to cover and many more examples, so I hope you will join me in the next part, where there will also be a film to illustrate the above.

Meanwhile all the very best and if you have enjoyed this piece and found it interesting and/or useful please feel free to join the blog, subscribe to my youtube channel and of course to ask questions or comment and share your own experiences.

Sue


Pigeon Photographers of Dresden, thanks to the Pinterest Board of petapixel.com

RELATED ARTICLES

If I could talk to the (animals) birds

Looking at the history and research behind bird communication, marking the start of a series of articles sharing ideas on how talking helps...read more

Chicken Speak 3 - The Food of Love - How Poultry Express Emotion Through Food 

For over two decades I’ve been observing the poultry in the garden and noting the marked changes in behaviour and language. To support and provide some ‘academic’ weight to my ideas about what has happened to my birds and how they have changed over ...read more

© 2016 Sue Cross