4 day old chick wants to peck it's mother's eye.

[Luckybaby]

Since one of my chick is more than 72 hours old, it usually try to peck it's mother eye, even though she appears to be full. The mother hen is really good at avoiding it's eyes from being peck, maybe at least at 99% chance of success. My problem is that, there is a possibility in the future that my hen's eyes will get peck by the chick. What should I do?

 

[chooks4life]

With intensive and unnatural environments, diets and breeding practices we have bred cannibalism into many strains of poultry so even freshly hatched chicks will drag others out of the eggs to devour their eyes etc. Your chick may just be plain stupid, or be of a cannibalistic bent. This is highly heritable if this is what your chick has. However, many babies peck at shiny things and it's possible it's just a slow learner.

At this age it likely can't do its mother any serious damage and she's big enough and probably smart enough to protect herself. If it keeps trying for over a week, personally I'd cull it, whether that means rehome or kill it; but it may well grow out of it.

If you provide other entertainments it should learn what to peck. I don't know what environment you're keeping it in but it would help if the mother had a place to dig for insects for the bub, so it can learn where to peck to get protein. Even a tray of dirt or sand with mealworms buried in it would help. My more instinctive hens never let their babies eat from provided food until they'd buried it and then pretended to dig it up and catch and kill it. Good instincts. I also had some mother cats who provided falsified hunting environments for their kittens to provoke their instinct so they didn't just take the food from the plate. I.e. they'd hide and bury prey like dead mice and then pretend to find it and kill it, to demonstrate.

Best wishes.

 

[Tumbleweed Farm]

With intensive and unnatural environments, diets and breeding practices we have bred cannibalism into many strains of poultry so even freshly hatched chicks will drag others out of the eggs to devour their eyes etc. Your chick may just be plain stupid, or be of a cannibalistic bent. This is highly heritable if this is what your chick has. However, many babies peck at shiny things and it's possible it's just a slow learner.

At this age it likely can't do its mother any serious damage and she's big enough and probably smart enough to protect herself. If it keeps trying for over a week, personally I'd cull it, whether that means rehome or kill it; but it may well grow out of it.

If you provide other entertainments it should learn what to peck. I don't know what environment you're keeping it in but it would help if the mother had a place to dig for insects for the bub, so it can learn where to peck to get protein. Even a tray of dirt or sand with mealworms buried in it would help. My more instinctive hens never let their babies eat from provided food until they'd buried it and then pretended to dig it up and catch and kill it. Good instincts. I also had some mother cats who provided falsified hunting environments for their kittens to provoke their instinct so they didn't just take the food from the plate. I.e. they'd hide and bury prey like dead mice and then pretend to find it and kill it, to demonstrate.

Best wishes.

How interesting--thank you!

 

[ChickenLegs13]

Luckybaby that's TCB (typical chicken behavior) my baby chicks have always done that and they are not malnurished cannibals. It's just something baby chicks do, and I have yet to have a hen lose an eye because of it.

 

[Luckybaby]

I didn't see them pecking on their mom's eye today. I'll observe them more in the future, to see if they will still do it.

 

[bobbi-j]

I agree with ChickenLegs. The chick saw something shiny and was curious about it. If the mother can't avoid getting pecked in the eye by her chick, I would most certainly not breed her genetics back into my flock. It will be fine, really.

 

[chooks4life]

Luckybaby that's TCB (typical chicken behavior) my baby chicks have always done that and they are not malnurished cannibals. It's just something baby chicks do, and I have yet to have a hen lose an eye because of it.

It's not that typical, the majority of mine never did it. Cannibalism does not depend on malnourishment. It has a genetic basis, and well fed animals prone to cannibalism exhibit it, whereas malnourished animals not prone to cannibalism can starve to death without ever exhibiting it.

Cannibalism is actually something we bred into them, not something all chickens automatically resort to. Hence my reference to some birds automatically exhibiting the trait from hatching onwards. It's just the 'program' some run on. Particularly breeds and strains from intensively farmed genetics and backgrounds.

It's not uncommon for babies to peck at shiny things though, as I said, I never implied it had to be malnourished, lol! The issue is in how long it continues. If it doesn't learn soon, and its mother also doesn't learn soon, that's a future problem.

Best wishes.

 

[subhanalah]

I think it's the mother's job to teach the chick not to do that. Right?

 

[chooks4life]

I think it's the mother's job to teach the chick not to do that. Right?

Not in my experience. The very few chicks I've had that pecked at eyes stopped after three or so pecks, and all the adults ever did was close their eye or move their head away. About 95% never pecked at eyes. Those that did came from high production breeds.

Baby chickens from less intensively farmed ancestry either never peck at eyes or stop of their own accord, as their instincts are more intact, more natural, and direct them to begin exhibiting normal behaviors from hatching onwards. Whereas baby chickens from intensively farmed ancestry, as I mentioned before, are known to commence cannibalism straight from hatching onwards, and as a rule not as an exception, not driven by malnourishment; it's just what their instincts are directing them to do. They view their own kind as food.

It's an instinctual aberration we bred into them. When a normal baby chicken hatches, it begins pecking at objects on the nest floor, not it's mother's face, from its earliest hours. One of the first things it eats are particles of its own eggshell; its instincts tell it to seek things on the ground to eat. Normal baby chickens don't have this confusion about eyes as food sources. Just like wild birds; can you imagine a world where wild birds ran the risk of losing their eyes to their own chicks? There would be much less in the way of wild birds. But that's unheard of; wild birds do not have this trait of pecking at their parent's eyes, or need to be taught not to.

When an abnormal baby chicken hatches, its warped instincts tell it to seek nourishment from the eyeballs, feet, and bodies of its own kind, not seek it elsewhere like on the ground. It will often ignore nourishment from elsewhere to continue to attempt to consume its own kind. You can spot these in a normal flock, walking around fixated on the eyes of their own kind, or whatever body part they are predisposed to attack and consume. These are not learned behaviors in the individuals exhibiting them, and they cannot be unlearned. They were gradually bred into them. They can be bred out over generations if you prevent the animals acting on them, but a dormant behavior is still genetically viable, so just because you prevent them acting on it does not mean they won't breed it on. You have to stop them acting on it for many generations and breed the least inclined in order to breed it out.

This is actually why we have cannibalism in the first place. Cannibalistic hens who were good layers were debeaked, and/or had spectacles and red lights etc applied to stop them, but were still bred, not culled. They were stopped from acting on it, but still bred, and so passed on their incorrect instincts, because natural selection dictates that any animal surviving to breeding age should pass on its traits because they served it well enough to enable its survival. Hence, they are viable and successful traits, even if only within abnormal environments we keep them in.

This isn't some random, abstract idea, it's been proven in studies, and some breeds are noted as being heavily genetically predisposed to cannibalism, and it is not caused by malnourishment, though in cannibalism-prone breeds that can trigger it...

But, again, in non-cannibalistic breeds, malnourishment does not trigger cannibalism. They starve instead.

Cannibalism is something you can breed in, or out, over as little as 5 to 7 generations, depending on how you keep them, what diet you keep them on, and the all important aspect of which birds, exhibiting which behaviors, you choose to breed on.

Best wishes.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

What I was saying was baby chicks peck at *everything* in a inquisitive or investigative way. If they're cannibalistly trying to eat each other's eyeballs out in an agressive or hostile way I wouldn't call that TCB.