Chickens can show their happiness with many different ways. Yours may be happy clucking* or digging, but right now I'll stick with how chickens express they're happy first.
Chickens can show they're happy by digging, dust bathing, eating, drinking, or laying eggs, and always up for a treat. You may already have noticed your flock's daily stuff that they do everyday.
1. Why does dust bath make chickens happy?
Imagine yourself in a cool pool on hot summer day. You're laying on a small float and is enjoying the sun. Would that feel relaxing? For me, definitely. For chickens, since that they don't really swim (there are some chickens that do, maybe your's do, but most chickens don't, they can get nervous or stressed in the water), their pool in the summer is the soft dirt on the ground. Anywhere that's available : Wood chips, dry dirt, sometimes even on small pebbles (that's what my chick do)!
Dust bathing also helps chickens keep themselves clean. Chickens would find an area of wood chips or things that suits and lay down (not feet on the top) and just puff their feathers up than start shaking themselves, letting the dust in, and repeating that several times. After a dust bath, they would than shake all the dust out, and in the same time bring all the dirty stuff out. If your chickens are kept in a pen that's ground is filled with poops that won't allow your chickens to have their baths, they might get stressed and be desperate to get out and have a bath. So if your chicken coop is like that, I suggest you either let your chickens out in your yard or get them a big box (must be AT LEAST 6-8 inches tall) and fill it with dust. If you don't want to do either of those I suggest you to just soften the dirt and take out the dust.
This is my 3 of my chickens (Flawie, the brown one, Yellowie, the yellow one, and GeryWhite, the one with grey mix white feather one) dust-bathing in the coop. You can see that they, themselves, dug out a comfortable place for dust-bathing.
2. Eating, Drinking, and Laying Eggs
A schedule of eating, drinking, and laying eggs can show the health of your flock! If your chickens are stressed, they might stop laying eggs or stop eating and drinking everyday. This may cause a health problem. Spend more time with your flock if any of them are having this problem to find out why they're not doing their normal schedule. But just to let you know that when your ladies go broody, they won't drink or eat much. So if your chicken's just sitting in the nest box all day don't worry and let them be. But if your still kind of worried, you can always put some food in a small box and give it to your chicken! They will eat it, but they'll still remain sitting in their nest. If you don't want to do that, you can also add a food and water feeder if you have enough room for it, just remember it'll have to be close enough but not too close to the nest!
How do I know if my chickens are stressed?
Have you ever paid close attentions too your chicken's clucks? Science results says that chickens has more than 30 types of different clucks that they put together and speak to each other! It will be hard to understand what your chicken's saying specifically but you would be able to tell their different emotions by listening closely to their clucks. For now I can only tell the stressed cluck, since it's definitely the most obvious one to notice. Your chicken may be clucking rapidly without any rest for 10-30 minutes in a high-pitched, kind of annoying voice. You can tell the difference of their normal cluck and their "annoying" cluck. Chickens may do their " annoying" cluck because of many things, such as hunger, thirst, or complaining that they're caged for too long (if you've been keeping your chickens in their coop for their whole entire life, that probably won't happen, but if you've let your chickens out to play in your yard and let free-range before, they'll desperately want to come out again, which is what my chickens do, since that we've been letting them just running around the yard, but than they kept on pooping on our patio and now we have to keep them in, and they just get really stressed and keeps on clucking tell they can't keep doing it any more.). Your chickens might even continue doing this for days to weeks to months if they don't get what they wish. So maybe set a schedule of 30 or 60 minutes of letting your chickens out per day, and they'll be happy and your yard won't have too much chicken poops (but yes, there'll definitely still be chicken poops).
Hopefully this article is useful. Thanks for reading!
Chickens can show they're happy by digging, dust bathing, eating, drinking, or laying eggs, and always up for a treat. You may already have noticed your flock's daily stuff that they do everyday.
1. Why does dust bath make chickens happy?
Imagine yourself in a cool pool on hot summer day. You're laying on a small float and is enjoying the sun. Would that feel relaxing? For me, definitely. For chickens, since that they don't really swim (there are some chickens that do, maybe your's do, but most chickens don't, they can get nervous or stressed in the water), their pool in the summer is the soft dirt on the ground. Anywhere that's available : Wood chips, dry dirt, sometimes even on small pebbles (that's what my chick do)!
Dust bathing also helps chickens keep themselves clean. Chickens would find an area of wood chips or things that suits and lay down (not feet on the top) and just puff their feathers up than start shaking themselves, letting the dust in, and repeating that several times. After a dust bath, they would than shake all the dust out, and in the same time bring all the dirty stuff out. If your chickens are kept in a pen that's ground is filled with poops that won't allow your chickens to have their baths, they might get stressed and be desperate to get out and have a bath. So if your chicken coop is like that, I suggest you either let your chickens out in your yard or get them a big box (must be AT LEAST 6-8 inches tall) and fill it with dust. If you don't want to do either of those I suggest you to just soften the dirt and take out the dust.
This is my 3 of my chickens (Flawie, the brown one, Yellowie, the yellow one, and GeryWhite, the one with grey mix white feather one) dust-bathing in the coop. You can see that they, themselves, dug out a comfortable place for dust-bathing.
2. Eating, Drinking, and Laying Eggs
A schedule of eating, drinking, and laying eggs can show the health of your flock! If your chickens are stressed, they might stop laying eggs or stop eating and drinking everyday. This may cause a health problem. Spend more time with your flock if any of them are having this problem to find out why they're not doing their normal schedule. But just to let you know that when your ladies go broody, they won't drink or eat much. So if your chicken's just sitting in the nest box all day don't worry and let them be. But if your still kind of worried, you can always put some food in a small box and give it to your chicken! They will eat it, but they'll still remain sitting in their nest. If you don't want to do that, you can also add a food and water feeder if you have enough room for it, just remember it'll have to be close enough but not too close to the nest!
How do I know if my chickens are stressed?
Have you ever paid close attentions too your chicken's clucks? Science results says that chickens has more than 30 types of different clucks that they put together and speak to each other! It will be hard to understand what your chicken's saying specifically but you would be able to tell their different emotions by listening closely to their clucks. For now I can only tell the stressed cluck, since it's definitely the most obvious one to notice. Your chicken may be clucking rapidly without any rest for 10-30 minutes in a high-pitched, kind of annoying voice. You can tell the difference of their normal cluck and their "annoying" cluck. Chickens may do their " annoying" cluck because of many things, such as hunger, thirst, or complaining that they're caged for too long (if you've been keeping your chickens in their coop for their whole entire life, that probably won't happen, but if you've let your chickens out to play in your yard and let free-range before, they'll desperately want to come out again, which is what my chickens do, since that we've been letting them just running around the yard, but than they kept on pooping on our patio and now we have to keep them in, and they just get really stressed and keeps on clucking tell they can't keep doing it any more.). Your chickens might even continue doing this for days to weeks to months if they don't get what they wish. So maybe set a schedule of 30 or 60 minutes of letting your chickens out per day, and they'll be happy and your yard won't have too much chicken poops (but yes, there'll definitely still be chicken poops).
Hopefully this article is useful. Thanks for reading!
