Buff suddenly screaming

[Jamalt1]

One of our Buff Orpingtons has started screaming throughout the day. It has been going on for a week. She is walking around the run, not acting broody by staying in a nesting box. Every few minutes she will just give out one loud yell. We have ten chickens and none has acted like this before. She is two years old. Any thoughts?

 

[azygous]

It sounds as if your hen is practicing her "crow". Yes, hens do crow. Why? Probably for the same reason roosters crow - they like the sound of it.

I have two such hens. One is older, six years old, and has crowed for years. It sounds like a scream with a yodel at the end.

The other hen is three and she gets off a very reasonable facsimile of a rooster crow, complete with all the right notes and inflections.

Hope you have no neighbors offended by the noise. There's nothing you can do to stop your hen from her musical ambitions.

 

[DuckPro]

She Might be singing her egg song. Like this: bark bark bark bark BIDARK! More info here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/screaming-screeching-hen.313072/page-2

 

[All Ball]

Ok, I have a screamer. She drives me crazy because there are neighbors nearby, and she shrieks at the top of her lungs - kind of sounds like a shrieking toddler who was a heavy smoker! The noise is atrocious.

She starts short and low, then increases in length, pitch and volume. She sings along with the rooster (between his crows), but does it on her own too - no emotions about it. I am afraid I will need to put her in the garage to sleep every night - the rooster's crows are loud but soothing and musical. Her screams are anything but, particularly at 6 a.m.

She was hatched with slight defects, and I have wondered if her singing - she is clearly singing to herself - is another result of what I hypothesize is slight brain injury. She kind of spaces out and doesn't really grasp that I am yelling at her trying to train her to shut up. She didn't do this until she began laying, and held off for several months after an egg-binding incident nearly did her in - my guess is it took that long to heal internally and her body wasn't up to the exertion.

 

[All Ball]

By the way, my screamer isn't crowing. My lead hen sometimes crows, and she pulls her head back just like a rooster. The screamer doesn't do that.