Hubby said yesterday, "So, the chickens will be going to bed earlier now...I said No, they go to bed at their regular time, they don't have clocks on the wall or leg watches !! I know it gets darker every day, and we humans are changing our clocks, but I think my chooks use the position of the sun for their purposes!!!! Ack, am I right?
You are right, chickens don't know about clocks. They just go to bed before it gets dark, and get up right after it gets light. They do not see too well in the dark.
there are a lot of animal species that run off the sun. marbled murrelets have the highest detection rates within minutes of 'official' sunrise. even when the sun isn't visible due to heavy fog or cloud cover. 30,000 or so vaux's swifts here in town roost in a large chimney and they typically start diving into the chimney within a few minutes of 'official' sunset. anyway i'm sure there are a bunch more too.
My animals hate daylight savings time changes even more than I do. Now their breakfast will be late. Small children also take a couple of weeks to reset.
You are correct in that the chooks will still be on their regular little schedule. They don't have all of these stupid complictaed rules to live by that we modern day humans seem to think necessary for everyday existance. All they know is, get up eat, scratch, lay and egg, scratch, dust bath, scratch then roost. How much simpler can you get than that? LOL
When we discussed this yesterday my SO told me the story of how mad his mom would get when her milk cow wouldn't come to the shed "on time" to be milked when the time would change. As he explained to her, the cow was on the right time. It was us humans that were all messed up.
