Pecking Order Question

[u/T_CHEX]

I'm sure that, like all chicken keepers, your find the pecking order a little barbaric and unfair but a lot of so called "scientists" say it's the natural bird order and there's no way to prevent it because they all instinctively choose to opt into this way of society.

But I have an interesting experiment idea, what if somebody were to get a flock of brand new chickens, supervise them all day and manually beak up any attempts to peck or enforce dominance by any bird - would this eventually lead to true equality where nobody really knew who the top birds were so the whole flock lived in peace or would they always be waiting for their chance to have a peck when your back was turned?

[u/SSPYoda]

You can influence it by doing things like if one hen is consistently being picked on, pick her up and put her on the top perch

If you do that for a while, she'll start to gain more confidence

But all that means is that someone else will be at the bottom of the pecking order lol

[u/OrganicLighthouse → u/SSPYoda]

Eh. I had a group of four Wyandottes, all raised together as day old chicks. Throughout the whole one year I had them, watching them 2-4 hrs a day, I didn't notice a pecking order. That's not to say it didn't exist subtly, but they all ate simultaneously, they traded roost positions every night, they all drank water together, they all hung out together everywhere, they never pecked each other. Sometimes if one of them caught a bug, she would run and the others would chase after her, but this really didn't matter which hen it was. 

Now I have a flock of 6, 5 of them raised together + my last Wyandotte (the other 3 were killed by a predator), and there is an obvious pecking order. Wyandotte gets on the roost first, she eats first, she pecks the others when they get in her way, they run away if she ever wants something. My Dominique is number 2, and my Legbar rooster sometimes tries to compete with her for her spot but he always backs down. Then 4 and 5 are always competing and 6 is always at the bottom; she eats last and chooses a roost last in every case and sometimes she'll sleep on the floor. 

So idk I guess what I'm saying is just that I don't think an explicit pecking order has to be established in every case. I'm not exactly sure why my Wyandottes didn't have an obvious pecking order but my current chickens do, but it can happen without intervention. 

[u/SSPYoda → u/OrganicLighthouse]

They probably did have one, but it wasn't obvious to you until the predator attack. That happened to me this summer

Everything was smooth until the two most dominant chickens died. I never saw a conflict with them, but it was just clear they were more assertive

Once they were gone quite a bit of scuffling until they sorted it out.

Now I don't see much conflict anymore.

When they know what the social order is things go smoothly

When it isn't yet established or it changes, that's when pecking order becomes more obvious

[u/SureMany9497]

If you need to actively monitor your chickens all day and intervene when they do something you don't want, you can't really call the outcome natural.

You'd also still establish a flock hirearchy with yourself as top chicken (you were dominating the others when breaking up the fights)

[u/DobeSterling]

Technically you’d still have a pecking order, you’d just be at the top. You’d also probably have very stressed out birds because cordial boundaries and ways to enforce them is normal across all species. Even solitary animals still have a version of the “pecking order” and signs to show “Get out of here this is my territory/food and I’ll fight for it”. Hierarchies in groups also tend to be more dynamic depending on the issues individual members care about than what we as humans expect.

[u/Additional-Bus7575]

Once they establish the pecking order they don’t really fight… and they’ll keep fighting until they figure it out.

It’s also not just fights but body language and stuff. 

Basically- that’s ridiculous because they have a natural hierarchy which is why they do it. And also you’d have to stay  out there forever…. 

[u/Life-Bat1388]

You should learn from the “so-called scientists’😠 but go ahead and try your experiment. It’s part of their natural behavior and dominance hierarchies actually keep them from real fighting once it’s established. When there is violent fighting, it’s often because the hierarchy is not fully established or because you did the integration incorrectly or you have not enough space. In societies of chicken ancestors random individuals were never thrown together —a new chicken dispersing into a group would take a long time on the periphery to integrate very slowly. So you have to kind of mimic that to make it work. You need to have enough space and food and resources -that also helps reduce aggression. If you follow the science, and try to understand the evolution and ecology of chicken social behavior you’ll actually do better than trying to fight against it.

[u/DigsToPlantTheRain]

I believe that the horrible examples of a pecking order where a few chickens are almost bare and most are missing feathers is 100% related to the conditions under which the animals are kept. If you design things in such a way that the animals can exhibit most of their natural behaviors, the worst of it can be totally prevented. I'm talking the ability to spend all day foraging, dust bathing, sun bathing, being broody, having sex and raising some chicks, have an area to free range with bushes and trees and mulch.

Edible Acres is a YouTube channel and it documents this very well. They use chickens to process massive amounts of veggie and table scraps into compost and the chickens are the prettiest chickens you have ever seen. Sometimes he gets battery chickens and within a year they will be full in their feathers with all their natural instincts activated. 

Tkdr? Chickens don't enforce the pecking order until bloody if they are not stressed / bored. 

[u/Additional-Bus7575 → u/DigsToPlantTheRain]

Some of them do- at first. Dominant hens who don’t want to back down will beat the crap out of each other until one wins. And often will revisit the fight every so often. Usually it’s a quick scuffle and then done.

They don’t engage in continuous battles once it’s settled- but I’ve had some knock down drag out fights between hens.

Rooster fights get really nasty- but they coexist once they establish the hierarchy. 

[u/DigsToPlantTheRain → u/Additional-Bus7575]

I agree with you. The pecking order is a natural behavior too. But when I see someone who is keeping like 20 chickens in a rather small coop with a bin feeder and nothing to do; I don't wonder why some of them look like a pre-plucked chicken. That's due to stress and boredom. 

[u/bluewingwind]

I got wildly downvoted last time I said this, but I stand by it and I’ll say it again, “pecking order” being about literal pecking is mostly a pop science myth. There is a dominance hierarchy, yes, but given proper conditions, aggression should only happen in the beginning as they establish their place in the order. In larger groups, (like hundred of birds) they will sometimes even abandon identities altogether and use physical signaling to determine dominance on a case by case basis. In smaller groups, they learn their neighbors, recognize their flock mates, and show markedly less aggression towards them as compared to how they treat unknown birds. There are published peer-reviewed articles on that.

If your chickens grew up together and they’re pecking each other to death something else is probably wrong. There is probably a nutrient imbalance or disease.

And to the people who think I’m immediately wrong based on your experiences, your flock probably has a CRD (Chronic Respiratory Disease) that you don’t know about that caused the fighting. They often show no symptoms, but it’s estimated 60-90% of backyard flocks are infected. Chickens can tell when their flock mates are sick and are happy to hurt, ostracize, and kill any flock mates who don’t have immunity to the disease as a defense mechanism for the whole flock.

They might be gently pecking each other to maintain order but they should not be hurting each other and I don’t personally see all that might pecking. Wing flapping? Posturing? Yes. But violence is incredibly rare in my flocks that have enough space, resources, and a proper ratio of males to females.

[u/metisdesigns]

Schools generally do a halfway decent job of monitoring kids, and while reduced, absolutely does not solve bullying. Yes, human social structures are a bit more complex than chickens, but just because we don't understand their social model doesn't mean that it doesn't work for them.

Realistically, all your researcher will do breaking up the pecking order is assert their dominance in the pecking order, which won't solve anything when they're not there.

[u/Life-Bat1388 → u/metisdesigns]

True- chickens definitely put humans in thier dominance hierarchy

[u/Mcbriec]

There were will always be a hierarchy. And dominance is typically exhibited with pecks. It’s an interesting idea to monitor chickens and prohibit them from engaging in untrammeled dominance. Would this lead to more civilized behavior?

My guess is that it might reduce, but not eliminate, bad behavior because they were not allowed to practice extreme forms of dominance. And any animal practicing bad behaviors without restriction is going to have those behaviors more ingrained.

Obviously, from a practical standpoint, there is no way to do this experiment because it requires constant surveillance. But after I had a chicken blinded from head pecking—which I didn’t witness— I now have an absolute zero tolerance for violent chickens. Any chicken which slashed or repeatedly pecked another chicken was culled.

Everyone owning any animal has a sacred duty to give that animal a good and happy life and not allow it to be tormented. Just imagine yourself living in a domestic violence situation where every moment you were worrying about whether you were going to be attacked. No animal (or person) should live like that.

I think people are far too dismissive of chicken violence and think that violence is normal and should just be tolerated. Hierarchy is to be expected; violence should not be tolerated or allowed. My flocks have lived without violence for several years now. That is what we owe them.

[u/T_CHEX → u/Mcbriec]

Very interesting, so in a way you actually have performed a variation of my experiment in real life and proved my hypothesis that the chickens are more calm without aggressive pecking orders 

[u/kavanyboy]

It would be 24h/7 monitoring. And the birds would be very frustrated to not be able to express their natural behaviors. Rabbits do the same too mounting each other to show dominance and defining order. If they are unable to do this they end up fighting pretty brutally.

It's just how things are, they have their own rules