Chicken knew to play dead?

[blue fire]

When I catch the realy flighty chickens that are hard to catch as soon as they grab them and they are in my arms they stop fighting and sit there. It is like they think their life is over, they are going to die and there is no use in fighting, silly chickens

 

[ptitterington]

A couple of times our boxer don 18month old has caught one of the chickens and we thought he had killed it, but as soon as he walked away if jumped up and ran to the hen house. He did pull some feathers out of one of them but did not bite them.
He just sat there holding the chicken down quietly. Very strange.

 

[little1523cacklers]

So this is my first post =]


Well last night after we went to bed we heard our chickens screaming, well the rooster has taken to trying to mate the girls and we thought thats what it was till they started screaming in a different way. We ran outside and saw our dog had climbed the fench (its a eight foot fence who would have thought....) and had one of my hens who i raised from a bittie in his mouth and i was sure he was dead because his neck was bent to the side and he had stopped screaming and we got the dog out of the way and i picked him up and he popped right up.

So do chickens know to play dead when thier in danger? I tried to look over the internet but could find nothing on it. Has anyone elses chickens ever done this?


Thankfully my chicken was alright. All the others one ran into the house we have for them so all of them were ok =]




Thanks!

I think you need to get rid of the dog beause now it know it an get to the birds it will try again.

 

[dainerra]

no need to get rid of the dog. Why is that always the first answer? A much better idea would be to confine the dog, supervise, and train. When the birds are out, the dog is on leash or under control. When the dog is loose, the chickens are penned. Easy-peasy.

 

[audrey02026]

I have a chicken that did that it was lying on the ground playing dead after the dogs attacked it.. I cam tout and yelled at the dogs and brought them inside and the chicken would not move thought it was dead...picked her up and she did the same thing perked right up.

 

[mississippimrs]

I used to live in Wisconsin on a farm. I had my flock of chickens out in the yard and lay down for a nap. I awoke to the sound of my dog barking and found that he had gotten off his leash I had hooked him to when I put my chickens out. My whole flock were lying motionless all over the yard. I called my dad crying and told him the dog killed the whole flock. He came down and picked up one of the chickens and set it back down and it ran off. We picked up and set down each one before they would even move. So, I know chickens play possum. Mississippimrs

 

[dm4ever]

my chickens at school have been playin dead because a hawk got too close to them and it completely skared them cause there was over 20 eggs in each pin of 10 chickens