Red face emotional response

[Ilovechickens2525]

Hi, so I have just learned about this emotional response in chickens, caught on to it today and then got curious and was reading up on it! Very nice to be able to see that visible clue that they are calm or stressed.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone knows at what age they start doing this? Do both hens and roosters do this? Have their face turn red when upset.

 

[VaDutch]

Where did you read about this? A healthy chicken will usually have a red face.

 

[Ilovechickens2525]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159124001163?via=ihub

There’s a recent research study, it looks like it was just recently published. Very interesting!

 

[TooCheep]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159124001163?via=ihub

There’s a recent research study, it looks like it was just recently published. Very interesting!

Meh. Even from the short abstract, it looks not very helpful.

Any seasoned chicken owner can tell you that common reasons for paler comb/wattles is youth, lower rank in the flock, illness and general stress. Healthy, dominant, adult birds tend to be the reddest.

Our observations revealed that hens exhibited the highest degree of facial skin redness in negative situations of high arousal, a high redness in positive situations of high arousal, and the lowest in positive situations of low arousal.
...
However, habituated hens exhibited significantly lower fearfulness and facial skin redness in the presence of humans compared to non-habituated hens in the reactivity to human test.

If you spend time with the birds from when they are young, then the apparent contradiction to my statement disappears. The S-IgA tests aren't a useful measurement for 99.9%+ of us.

 

[aart]

The red has more to do with laying status and/or level of physical exertion and/or stress.

Close to laying pullets used to drive me nuts with their changing 'redness' until I understood.

 

[Ilovechickens2525]

The red has more to do with laying status and/or level of physical exertion and/or stress.

Close to laying pullets used to drive me nuts with their changing 'redness' until I understood.

Is it just in hens or Roos too? This redness.

 

[Ilovechickens2525]

Meh. Even from the short abstract, it looks not very helpful.

Any seasoned chicken owner can tell you that common reasons for paler comb/wattles is youth, lower rank in the flock, illness and general stress. Healthy, dominant, adult birds tend to be the reddest.



If you spend time with the birds from when they are young, then the apparent contradiction to my statement disappears. The S-IgA tests aren't a useful measurement for 99.9%+ of us.

Ok, if you don’t find it interesting guess you could just ignore it?

I found it interesting, personally.

 

[aart]

Is it just in hens or Roos too? This redness.

Might apply to males, before they become sexually mature, never really noticed much with them.

 

[VaDutch]

The test was on pullets. They had a young rooster in the non habituated group I believe but they threw out the results. I wonder if the male in the group could have messed with the results of the females he was running with. I also wonder how much oxygen intake had anything to do with the redness when stressed. Interesting study though.

 

[VaDutch]

Oh yeah...they start doing that more when they are young and feathered out. Hens and roosters will both do it and a really pale face usually means there could be something wrong.