Reply to chook.. Thank you for that informative answer. I still have scars on my hand from a RIR rooster from12+ years ago. We cut his spurs off but they grew back.
You're welcome. Spurs are basically like nails, claws, etc they have cuticles and 'beds' which regrow unless removed. If severely damaged enough they may produce 'scur'-like growths instead of the proper shape. Some people use hot potatoes to despur roosters but in the very few instances where I decided to alter a rooster's spurs I only cut a few mils off the tip, not enough to hurt or bleed, but enough to blunten it. That point's what does the most damage, even the remaining 98% of the spur can't do anywhere near the same amount of damage minus that point. It is something you need to keep doing if you decide to do it though as it does grow back, of course.
We have not had chickens in more than ten years, so I am re-learning things. We just got back into chickens again and have 16 seven-week-old RIR "hens" (& 1 black sex link) who were all supposed to be girls, but 4 are looking decidedly male. I have noticed one of them darting up and pecking me hard on the hand and running away nearly every time I feed or water and had wondered if this was aggressive or just playful.
Since this is not a normal play behavior for them, safe to say it's not the most positive sign. It could be sexual attraction, aggression, or some obsessive reaction to your hand for whatever reason, perhaps confusing it with food or confusing the connection between your hand holding food and your hand itself. Not all chickens appear to have more brains than a goldfish, but most are much smarter than given credit for.
The others do not do this. The hens, by contrast, will only stand there and peck gently if they see a freckle and they do not run away.
I'd pay attention to those freckles if I were you, just in case. Skin cancer is pretty common in my family, as are the skin types prone to freckling (at least for some of us) and the only time I've seen our animals pay attention to freckles/moles/spots, it's because they are no longer benign. They can sense some kind of change in them much like some dogs do, but I've seen cats also react to precancerous cells as well.
However, they will also peck specks of food off one another and you, and some investigative pecks of a very, very gentle nature are part of that, but if they keep at it, I'd get them checked. The freckles, that is, not the chickens, lol.
I will now pay more attention to their behavior to make sure I can cull them early before they get like "psycho rooster". The bigger they are, the worse they can hurt you because they get so much stronger.
Amen to that, lol, and they often get far more cunning too, and learn to bide their time and how to make the most of their best chances to seriously hurt their intended victim.
I have no problem with having a couple of roosters, but I will have to learn how to fry chicken if one goes psycho on me. I do have one question chook, what is the deal with the chickens getting on top of the 1 gallon waterers and acting like they are wanting to either rip it open or mate with it? I have never seen this until now and have seen both hens and roosters do this. I switched to gallon ones instead of quart to keep them from turning them over with this behavior.
That's strange. Are they squatting and shuffling into position to mate, or just attacking it?
No, nothing in the throat. I'm told that this very well could have been a weather, pressure thing..and it makes sense. I haven't seen him do it since.
Yesterday evening while observing him, I noticed he made this yawning motion, ..only it was not a regular yawn. More like he was stretching his throat or something, ..and he did this 7/8 times in a row. I see nothing in his throat. ..just thought I'd mention it.
