Chickens opening mouths wide

[chickluvr]

Sorry, i dont know if this is usual for chickens or not. I'm new at this, but my chickens open their mouth wide for a while. When it was hotter i thought they were just trying to cool off. But now its not hot here at all and they are still doing it. I started adding more grit to their food today. Any ideas? Oh, they dont do it all the time, just some times during the day.

 

[ThePamperedPullet]

This seems to be normal behavior. If the are not making funny sounds but merely stretching their mouths then this is a normal action. Most every hatch that we have done has had a few that exibited this behavior. It seems to go away after a couple of weeks.

 

[Sillystunt]

mine do it as well.Think of a dog panting. Kinda like that~

 

[threehorses]

Watching their tongues and their throats will tell you if the birds are panting. They usually move their whole throat.

Are they gaping like they're trying to breathe? At all stretching out their mouths?

If it's panting, you might want to read the thread here about keeping birds cool in the heat and losing birds to heat. It has some really great info from a wide variety of people.

 

[Frenchy chick]

Mine do that when they are thirsty and their water is out.

 

[chickluvr]

They are about 6 weeks old and nothing else seems to be wrong with them. Thanks for your help. I thought maybe they had some internal worms or something! You can tell i've never done this before.