I cant speak chicken...yet

[dewpetals]

So I pulled these hens out of our flock almost a month ago. They are better and today I reintroduced them. The rooster is doing the dance, squating low, head down..these two were his favorites befire I quarantined them. The other hens...well, you know, the pecking order thing. Anyway, I'm curious about what my rooster is doing here in this video. He did it more than once and they were all frozen in time for a good 45 seconds! What does it mean??

 

[Callender Girl]

I've never seen chickens do this.

However, my goats will occasionally all face the same direction, stop, stand motionless and simultaneously stare at nothing (that I can see) for a minute or two. It always freaks me out a bit.

 

[Sussex19]

I've noticed this sort of thing a fair bit, although this does seem to be a very good example of it!
I don't know what it means, but if I slowly bring my hand up to my rooster face, he will freeze, and I can handle him when I can't normaly.
I've also seen it when two roosters meet, before they start fighting. It seems to be caused by one chickens beak being near anothers in certain circumstances.

 

[Shadrach]

So I pulled these hens out of our flock almost a month ago. They are better and today I reintroduced them. The rooster is doing the dance, squating low, head down..these two were his favorites befire I quarantined them. The other hens...well, you know, the pecking order thing. Anyway, I'm curious about what my rooster is doing here in this video. He did it more than once and they were all frozen in time for a good 45 seconds! What does it mean??

He's re-imprinting his hens.
The more common sighting of this behaviour is when one of the roosters hens has sat and hatched chicks. At some point when the rooster can gain access to the chicks he imprints them.
Here is a picture of a rooster imprinting his chicks while the mother keeps a wary eye on the proceedings.

Nobody knows what information is gained by the rooster and the chicks/hens when this is done, but every batch of chicks I know of are imprinted by their rooster before they are accepted into the tribe.
There is some discussion that a rooster will know if the chicks are his. There is no proof of this.
This imprinting also happens when a hen is away from the tribe for a period of time. Nobody that I know of has studied how long a hen needs to be away for the rooster to re-imprint.
There are only two circumstances normally when a rooster will drop his head to the height of a hen or chick; one is an invitation for a hen to groom him and the other is the imprinting you've observed.