Three-week old chick tid-bitting. Common or unusual?

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Smoda said:
Hi azygous, what did Peppermint end up being?



I have a 11 week old Australorp pullet called Butter Grumbles who tidbits!

She has done this, like yours, since she was about 3wks old.

I worried she was a rooster but no wattles, light pink face, squats when I pet her and she had t lovely round feathers.

Would love to hear about Peppermint!
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Hi. I just wanted to say if butter is squatting for you this mean SHE will be laying eggs very soon. After mine would squat the eggs came within a week to week and a half. ALL my hens STILL squat for me when they hear my voice or I walk up. By the squatting behavior I'd guess pullet. let us know and keep us posted. I'm guessing she will lay very soon :)
 
I will keep you updated! Thanks so much for the replies. Butters is pretty young, 10wks old. Here is two pics I took just now.

400


And here's her with a lemongrass cigar

400
 
azygous said:
In all my eight years of raising chickens, I've never seen a baby chick tid-bit when given a treat. They usually gobble it fast before the others can get it.

Yesterday, I opened up the chick-sized portals in all of the partitions in my run so my three chicks, three-weeks old tomorrow, can begin the integration process by mingling with the adults. They quickly became adept at zipping around the run at warp speed, ducking through a portal when they need to evade a pursuing bully.

Today, I noticed Peppermint, my one Gold Cuckoo Marans baby, was spending a great deal of time just loafing with the adults, and they were very accepting, making no aggressive moves toward her. The other two babies, both Cream Legbars, kept together, and while they ventured out into the run a lot from their safe pen, didn't spend quite as much time hanging out with the adults as Pepper did.

Then at bedtime, I gathered them back into their chick pen and gave them some meal worms. After eating a few worms, Pepper grabbed another one from my hand and ran off a little ways and began dropping the worm and picking it back up again, all the while tid-bitting, looking around and chattering rapidly exactly like an adult ranking chicken will do when they find something good and want to alert the others to it.

She repeated the behavior a minute later with another worm. The other two chicks either ignored Pepper or didn't understand what she was doing.

I'm wondering if Pepper, in spending so much time hanging with the adults, picked up this behavior. Or maybe this is normal behavior for baby chicks, too. But I've sure never seen this before.
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I see it routinely with free-range birds. A chick will not only tell siblings, it will tell mother. Chicks will be silent when birds not kin are close by and consume eats directly. Chicks will tidbit when finding water as well and I am not sure the sounds are the same. At first I thought it was males only doing it but found females do it as well. I did some cool experiments with games I allowed into kitchen where chicks would drift from hen and I could hide treat piles. Once on bird found treat pile all would rush to it. This behavior may start as young as 2 weeks which is about same time chicks begin foraging a few feet away from mother. This behavior also evident with broods without a mother.
 
So perhaps Butter Grumbles is just sharing. You did chick tidbit experiments in your kitchen Centrarchid, that would have been adorable to watch! Great info.
 

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