Why do my rescue hens obsessively peck footwear?

[aart]

I am just interested as they will peck the same spot repeatedly when there seems to be no obvious reward.

Because they can be incredibly stupid and/or idiotically neurotic?
I've seen chickens seem almost genius....and also the exact opposite. <shrugs>

 

[HollyWoozle]

Because they can be incredibly stupid and/or idiotically neurotic?
I've seen chickens seem almost genius....and also the exact opposite. <shrugs>

I suppose that is a legitimate reason

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Hmm. Just because we don't understand their behavior does not mean that behavior is idiotic or stupid, it just means we don't understand it. I just had a mental picture of chickens sitting on their roosts of an evening discussing human behavior. I wonder what they would make of the habit of smoking? (I am a former smoker, and I can't explain it to the satisfaction of a non-smoker!)

 

[IamRainey]

They're probably just interested in what's happening down at their eyelevel.

I used to spend more time inside my coop sitting with my chickens. Sometimes I was barefoot and they'd peck at my toes. Some folks here thought they were being aggressive. Uh oh! What am I supposed to do now?! Eventually, I figured out that they did it more when I had polished my toenails with red or bright polishes.

What I'm saying is it was new to them and new to me and I was imagining an issue that really didn't exist. I started wearing my adorable "chickie shoes" when I went in the coop and suddenly it was a non-issue.

Relax. Enjoy them!

 

[50-45-1]

Are your chore shoe-booties, a solid color or do they have a design or pattern?

 

[HollyWoozle]

It doesn't matter what footwear you wear, they just love to peck.

It doesn't bother me at all and I spend a lot of time enjoying their company, I was just curious in case anybody knew if there was any proven reason as to why they do it. No matter!

 

[Shadrach]

I think it may be a habit acquired during captivity. To be certain you would need to know how the shed they came from was set up. If one assumes it was a cage with a feed tray in front and an egg conveyor behind then pecking at anything not chicken at boot level may be what they identify with getting food.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I agree, it sounds like a learned behavior. Imagine a worker coming in, wearing boots, filling the food troughs or whatever they eat out of, spilling some, and the chickens pecking the spilled feed from the worker's boots.

 

[HollyWoozle]

That makes a lot of sense, although the battery cages here definitely don't have space for people to walk in. I assume then that the chickens just associate the pecking with some sort of potential reward and are so used to it that it's just ingrained in them now. The chickens on the lowest level would see footwear at feed time I guess!

 

[Biddybot]

I've got a couple of foot and pants peckers... All hens, too. They get me when I'm sitting on their old garden bench with them and they like a certain couple of old hikers I use as garden shoes and a specific type of pants I wear...the same gear I wear when whipper-snipping or lawn mowing. The whipper-snipping especially coats my shoes and pant legs with literally hundreds of tiny bits of grass and such which is probably lots of fun and tasty for the hens to pick off as it dries. This is likely what got the more 'normal' hens started... But I've also got an obsessive hen. She had her beak trimmed as a chick and needed some help to keep her lower mandible growing straight as her entire beak grew out as best it could as she matured. Well, her lower mandible still protrudes and always will, but she deals with it very well and self-trims nicely now by driving her beak into the ground HARD at times, which really helps blunt the excess back. She's also the one who likes to peck my shoes and pants HARD--I think there's something about the texture of them which keeps her going long past any possibility of picking up any actual whipper-snip tidbits. She's a friendly thing. Once done with my shoes and legs, she'll usually hop up and climb onto one of my thighs to have a grooming session and relax for a few minutes. I think she has some dim awareness that my trimming her beak with clippers back when she was just a chicklet and then a pullet was always followed by her finding it easier to peck and pick up food afterwards, hence my handling her was a good thing to be tolerated.

Anyway, hens with formerly clipped beaks which are still a little messed up...I think they're inclined to sometimes peck a lot just to be pecking. The rest, I think they peck mainly for food and to try and teach you to feed them treats or just pay attention to them.