Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

Surely 'family' would fit better

I agree, that's a much better description.

Nor what your problem is with flock. Why don't you want to use it? What is everyone else in poultry studies using it getting wrong or missing?

There are a few reasons. It's not an adequate term for the behaviour I and the studies, even the poor ones, have observed.
Flock to me and I've asked others, suggests a few hundred sheep grassing on a hill side, the seagulls returning to their roosts from foraging on the river Avon, a sky full of migrating geese. It's not well enough defined and most people when thinking of flocks (unless they're chicken keepers of course) would describe similar to what gets brought to mind when I think of the word.

Tribe carries lots of what's been described as baggage. Good broad consensus on this word as well, but with lots more clues about the kind of structure and social arrangement one might expect.

Perhaps you would like to link some of them. In the one I excerpted above more than 80% of the observations were of single birds. https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...rescued-chickens-thread.1502267/post-28985256
That paper and others suggest a lot of fluidity in the composition of groups as hens go broody and separate off to incubate and then raise their chicks. The groups are indeed small - tiny even - most of the time. And sometimes gather into groups of up to 25 in that paper and about 30 in other papers I've read on it.

For example, most people when defining or describing what the word tribe means will come up with a similar response to MJ response above.
One would expect a boss/king/leader in a tribe.
One would expect hierarchy in a tribe. One might expect a particular mating arrangement. What about alliances and friendships.
One might expect families in a tribe and knowing it's tribe how and where to look for them.
So the word tribe leads to clues as to what the social structure may be and where to look for evidence of it.
The word tribe is informative, whereas the word flock is essentially another word for lots.

When one wishes to learn more about the chicken natural social structure viewing the groups as tribes becomes very helpful. Take the egg song. It attracts a particular rooster, any old male won't do from what I've seen and the the comments about the article and posts on BYC. Why does it attract that rooster. because he's the hens rooster and it's his genes the hen wants to go forward. It gets more informative the deeper one digs. Why does her rooster respond to her call. He wants to prevent any other roosters genes going forward. Now you've got what other roosters; relatives maybe, but it seems it's from roosters from other groups more than tribe relatives. Now we have other groups.
Now you've got at least two tribes of the same species.
So, tribe I find adds some dimensions that flock doesn't.

Perhaps you would like to link some of them. In the one I excerpted above more than 80% of the observations were of single birds. https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...rescued-chickens-thread.1502267/post-28985256
That paper and others suggest a lot of fluidity in the composition of groups as hens go broody and separate off to incubate and then raise their chicks. The groups are indeed small - tiny even - most of the time. And sometimes gather into groups of up to 25 in that paper and about 30 in other papers I've read on it.

I don't understand what the relevance of sighting 80% single birds is.
Were the sightings of the single birds the same bird? Could they identify one bird from another? Seeing one bird on it's own doesn't mean it doesn't belong to a tribe. Lots more...
However, the paper does at least identify discrete groups of the same species which is what I believe we were on about. So I dare say to the others papers you presented bits of. I really don't see the need to waste my time on posting any further papers when we both know they will all describe (bar a couple of papers I recall where the jungle fowl were confined in a zoo) a number of small groups living in the studied area, when I know you have read exactly the same. You've even post a chart showing some kind of distribution.

I did ask you a question which you haven't answered.

Why is this?

 

[Mother of Chaos]

As someone with severe hip problems that mean I have to sit a lot, I do think of anything I can sit on as a chair.

If neither of us are paying attention, my cat can also be described as a chair. A very temporary, very painful chair.

 

[kattabelly]

Flock to me and I've asked others, suggests a few hundred sheep grassing on a hill side

Sheep, goats, cattle etc also display a lot of the same or similar(/analogous/equivalent?) behaviours as being discussed here, when they're allowed to do so.

A flock of - for most of the year - just ewes on a hillside probably doesn't say much more about sheep behaviour than a flock composed only of laying hens says about chickens.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

A flock of - for most of the year - just ewes on a hillside probably doesn't say much more about sheep behaviour than a flock composed only of laying hens says about chickens.

Completely agree. I would never say that my five would provide any insight into how a large group of chickens, mixed ages and sexes, would behave.

Other than endlessly eating and pooping.

 

[Shadrach]

A bit over one and a half hours today. Bus problems took half an hour off the two hours I had planned on.
A bit of drizzle with a light breeze and a temperature of 11C at one point.

The chicken were not impressed with their day. Mrs Psycho Chew a Coop came round over night and manage to wedge a bit of chewed plastic in one of the door channels and the door didn't open this morning.
They came out onto the extended run but didn't venture on to the field. I spent most of the time sorting the pop door out.

 

[Perris]

@Perris, how much space do your chickens have available? I know that they sometimes wander out of your property, but they seem to call your land their home.

We own about an acre. In addition there is the lane, which they wander across, to forage on the opposite bank and any flat areas up or down for about 20' beyond our patch going north, uphill, open with high tree cover.

They do not go an equivalent distance down the land, interestingly, where the banks are steep and close to the tarmac either side, though it is well covered; pheasants are often present in that space, but I think the difficulty of getting up and out the way of any vehicle, if necessary, is why my flock don't much like it there; it's too narrow and steep to flee sideways. They are liable to be/feel chased down the lane and a couple of hundred yards away from home if a car comes down.

I have never seen them use the fields on two sides, though they could enter either if they wished to, and the local pheasants are often to be seen in them. The fields are just grass, sometimes occupied by cows or sheep, and I don't think they offer anything the flock wants or can't find elsewhere.

They sometimes wander into the nearest neighbours' gardens, though we have all tried to discourage / prevent that best we can. A partially sighted chicken I had years ago used to wander much further and I'd get calls from 2 or 3 properties away that she was in their garden and go to retrieve her. Neighbours' cats and dogs sometimes enter our garden too, like the foxes, badgers, hedgehogs, hawks etc., so there's a general recognition here that we do what we can, but if it really bothers someone, 'fence out' (rather than 'fence in') is the rural rule around here.

 

[Perris]

I did ask you a question which you haven't answered

sorry!

Apparently these distinct groups when it comes to jungle fowl don't merge into one large group despite not have any physical boundaries to prevent them doing so.

Why is this?

They do merge. That was exactly what was going on with the larger flock number in that chart of which 80% of sightings were of individual birds.

edited to add: thinking about when my lot come together, the most obvious circumstance is for shelter. As many as can fit will stand or sit on the log pile, which is undercover from rain and blocks prevailing winds, while others congregate under the front door porch, and by the back door. All these places will have huddles of chickens when the weather's horrible. Other than that, most go together to rest and digest in the parrotia persica after breakfast. And occasionally I'll see a large proportion grazing together on the lawn.

At the other end of the scale, whatever else is happening, broodies with chicks are busy and apart from the rest dawn till dusk on foraging lessons, usually without company, sometimes with a subordinate roo, for 2 months+ . And single males and females pairing off (which seems to be about a fortnight-long process) will be doing their own thing apart from the flock for much of the day for the duration of their courtship.

 

[Perris]

a question that I have always had: if chickens are attracted to other birds of the same breeds because they look similar, how does an individual chicken know how it looks?

A very good question.

My problem with the 'birds of a feather' idea is that most chicken breeds - and all the wild type ones - are dimorphic. All the BYC 'Miss BYC' and 'Mr BYC' photo competitions depend on the sexual dimorphism that is natural to chickens.

 

[BDutch]

Well some people work for free (volunteer), so at least for some people the answer must be yes.

YES, I do voluntarily work. Makes me feel good to do something useful, and also for the social contacts.

other than being ridiculously informal and possibly implying that I can't count to five.

two tribes, the Bigs and the Littles,

Wrong, Two tribes go to war (Franky goes to Hollywood).

Flock to me and I've asked others, suggests a few hundred sheep grassing on a hill side,

? Isn’t it herding sheep or a herd of sheep. Never heard of flocking sheep or a flock of sheep before.

Mrs Psycho Chew a Coop came round over night and manage to wedge a bit of chewed plastic in one of the door channels and the door didn't open this morning.

I don’t have a psycho rat but had problems with both auto pop door with the cold /melting snow and batteries on low . One door didnt open Sunday, after putting in new batteries it works again. The other door didnt open Monday morning. This more expensive pop door claimed the batteries still had 40% capacity. The energy level of all the batteries I took out was the same.

They sometimes wander into the nearest neighbours' gardens,

Mine wander into the nearest neighbours' gardens too. Two neighbours like it if my chickens visit their garden. They enjoy the scenery with chickens. The third neighbour has a dog. They never go there when he is outside and rarely go there altogether.

 

[Shadrach]

They do merge. That was exactly what was going on with the larger flock number in that chart of which 80% of sightings were of individual birds.

Could you provide a link to the complete study please.
Just to be clear, merge to combine two or more into a single whole.