Are they kissing or fighting?

[azygous]

My twenty-week old Buff-Brahma cockerel Penrod has been carrying on a "relationship" of some kind with two of the fertile two-year old Wyandotte hens.

The boys and the girls are in separate pens, separated only by the poultry mesh. Penrod will peck the beak of the hen through the wire mesh, and she responds likewise. They peck each other through the fence in an up and down ritual. Each one gets rather excited, neck feathers flaring dramatically, looking like two cobras.

Are they courting? Or is it something else?

 

[WhiteMountainsRanch]

I would say fighting.

 

[Rozzie]

Chickens don't kiss. I can't tell you what they might be up to, but it sure isn't kissing.

 

[Matt A NC]

When courting a male normally has some sort of food to bribe the lady.

Your dominant hen or hens are fighting the male. The only way to stop it is to let him at them. He has to dominate(ie mating) them to put them in their place.

Matt

 

[azygous]

Thanks, Matt, that's very helpful information.

Everyone will just have to make do with the arrangement as it is for now. We're under bobcat lockdown after a summer of wildcat terror. In the coming winter months, hopefully there will be time for some proper chicken romance. And I only mean that figuratively. (Any idiot knows chickens don't kiss.)

PS : Matt, I'm so sorry about Dot. I felt the same way after the bobcat killed my sweet Michelle, my oldest Araucana hen, at the beginning of summer.

 

[sourland]

Well, you did ask if they were kissing.

They are definately challenging one another. One good fight, a little sex to make up and everything will be OK. Oh, wait a moment, that's humans.

 

[KCchickens]

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