Squatting Behavior?

[Gemsbok]

Okay, I'm a first-time chicken owner and after a bad experience with a sick bird I'm like a third-person hypochondriac.

I've got two birds, a SLW and a GLW. The gold laced is about a month older than the silver and has yet to lay an egg, so I was using her as a gauge of laying age. Today while they were out running around, the silver had been foraging in the grass when she suddenly froze and fluffed her feathers up. She shook her tail, and then slowly sunk to the ground and half extended her wings. She ended up nearly lying on her side with her hackles completely up, eyes wide open and staring at me and the other bird. She stayed that way for nearly a full minute until I approached, and then she got up and shook herself.

Is this what squatting is? She doesn't seem to have any other issues, she's active and is eating/drinking/pooping fine, no weird breathing sounds or gasping. I've never seen her do this before and all the squatting pics I've seen look a bit more...'graceful', I guess? Less agitated than she was? She's about 18-19 weeks, and her and the GLW have been eating the same feed and foraging in the same place. The gold does tend to bully her a bit, but she's still able to eat enough to fill her crop.

 

[Nupe]

Doesn't sound like an issue to me. Sounds like a sunbath. If the ground was dry and loose enough, she would start kicking up the dirt and wallowing in it, That's a dust bath. I put an area in their run specifically for dust bathing. It helps them keep parasites down and it is a social event between the chickens.

 

[Wyleiria]

I'm no expert by any means, but sometimes mine do that when they are sunning. It's like sometimes it hits them all the sudden, "oh, the sun, that felt good, I think I'll just lay down NOW!" I've had my husband get alarmed when he would see them just fall over for no apparent reason. Usually squatting only happens when I walk by a hen or sometimes (rarely) when my dominate hen walks by the lowest on the totem pole, the lowbie will squat.

 

[azygous]

What you saw your hen do wasn't "squatting". The form of squatting most people are referring to when they talk about it here is in the context of point of lay behavior and mating behavior. That is a symmetrical squat low to the ground with the wing shoulders elevated.

What you observed was sun bathing. Sun exposure is very important for chickens because they absorb vitamin D through their feathers. This is why your hen flopped on her side with hackles and wing elevated, to get maximum feather surface exposure.