Help with interpreting chicken behavior please.......

[akd23237]

Every now and then when I feed my chickens (flock of 3) my rooster will spread out one wing down his side, and he'll use his other side to block the other chicken's path to the food. He'll sometimes do this while quickly flapping his stretched out wing at his side and circle the other chicken. Has anyone else seen this? Is this part of chicken pecking order? I'm not sure what it means...

 

[CarriBrown]

He's not blocking them. It's what we call the "rooster dance" and that's his way of wooing his women! I suppose it's sort of like a pecking order... his way of saying, You're my lady. But he's not doing it to block them or be mean.

 

[akd23237]

Very interesting! One of the 3 chickens in the flock is less than 2 months old, and I saw the rooster do this to the chick. So this means that the chick is female, right? That's one thing I had been trying to guess at for a while...

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Quote:
Not neccesarily. My roosters also dance toward one another, almost as a challenge. LOL. Instigating little things. Mostly they do it towards hens, but they also do it toward people. So I wouldn't assume the chick is female, but post a picture of her in What Breed or Gender section and see what everyone thinks.

-Kim