I have a hen with 7 chicks. She wont stop scratching in the bedding, food, and water container. What do I do? We purchased her from an auction, so she hasn't been in with our full size chickens yet. The chicks and her mother are all bantam chickens. Once again, What do I do?
My momma did the same thing. I think she was hungry. Just put her and her babies in an open are so mom can scatch to her hearts content. Our babies now scratch along side mom.
Sounds like an instinctive behavior; scratching to teach the chicks how to find food. How cute it must be to see them with her!
She is doing what nature intended her to do. The hen is scratching for bugs or anything for the chicks to eat. Sometimes she will do that to make her a dust bath too. Even a hen that is allowed to free range with her babies will go around digging up stuff for them.
What a coincidence. . . I have a bantam hen with 7 chicks too! Mine will be 2 weeks old on Saturday. She does the same thing. She flicks the chick starter out of the feeder onto the floor and then scratches it around. They eventually peck most of it up. It can be messy, but she's just teaching her younguns. I sometimes scatter some of the feed onto the shavings so that she will scratch it around and "fluff" it up. We are getting a lot of crickets this time of year. They hide under the chickens door and when I open the door they jump into the mama hen's brooder coop. Those baby bantams are fast. That cricket doesn't stand a chance. The one that caught the cricket runs all around trying to keep it for himself. Mama usually pecks him on the head and takes the cricket and divides it up for them. Sort of a "you gotta share" thing.
