My chickens got a rare treat this late December morning as the snow has all but melted due to the recent warm up. So I decided to let them out to have fun searching around the yard. I was sitting outside watching everybody and feeding them some treats when I saw something that just seemed interesting. Interesting to me anyway, I love to watch animal behavior. I had some leftover lettuce from Christmas dinner and was feeding it the girls. It was all but gone so I took the last handful or so and threw it into a pile. The wind carried some of it off a little ways from the main pile. All of the birds moved towards the scattered stuff on the edges instead of the pile in the middle. Why wouldn't they jump right in? Predatory caution, leaving themselves open? I was intrigued. So I tried a couple more "tests." I took some sunflower seeds and dumped them in a pile. Then I took some and scattered them over a larger area. The birds seemed much more eager to take the ones that were scattered. Just seemed strange. Any other "way too hard-thinking" folks out there have any ideas as to why they act like this? I'm just curious.
It's flock foraging behavior, too. They know about the pile, and that's the fallback source. Seeing more at the edges they wonder if there are other sources farther out. Less competition with beaks, too. Then if someone finds another pile, they can check it and gather. If not, they *know* your original stack is there. Sometimes an individual will run off with a floppy piece of something from the original pile too, initiating a chase. I agree- they are FUN!
Some people say that they toss food out of the feeder so they can pick out what they want and leave the rest. IDK about this tho...
