The winter time is a cold and bitter time for both humans and animals but animals seem to be able to survive the winter with no issues, including chickens.
This article explores how wild chickens survive in the winter.
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How Do Wild Chickens Survive In The Winter?
Animals have different ways of keeping warm during the wintertime, they needed to find ways to stay warm in order to survive the cold.
Chickens are unlike other birds who would fly away and migrate when the weather starts to get too cold.
Here is how the wild chicken survived the bitter outside cold in the wild:
Feathers:
One of the ways that wild chickens will stay warm in the wintertime is that the birds will puff up their feathers when they start feeling cold.
Chicken feathers are not only waterproof, these feathers also help keep the bird warm.
When too cold wild chickens will puff their feathers up, this creates a layer between the feathers and the bird’s skin.
The bird’s body will release body heat and this body heat will be trapped between the bird’s skin and the bird’s feathers keeping the bird warm.
This is the same as humans wearing coats to keep body heat close to their bodies when we are cold in the wintertime.
Eating habits:
The food supply in the wild will start to dwindle during the winter months in the wild but this won’t stop the birds from looking for food and eating as much as they can.
Chickens eat more food when the weather starts to get colder, they eat everything they can to maintain a warm body temperature when it’s cold out as it takes a considerable amount of energy to stay warm.
Body language:
A cold chicken in the wild will lift one of its legs close to its body when it feels cold and will tuck its head close to its body while sleeping.
A bird that tucks its head underneath its wing, close to its body, when it is cold out will retain some of the body heat coming from its comb that would have been lost if it were to leave its head away from its body.
The same happens when your chicken tucks its leg close to its body.
The bird’s legs lose body heat when exposed, so standing on one leg and tucking the other helps the bird lose less body heat out in the wild during the wintertime.
Huddling up:
Chickens know that there is safety in numbers, they also know that they can huddle together when it’s cold out to keep each other warm.
The wild birds will gather together and huddle up to share each other’s body heat.
If they can they will come together in a sheltered place and huddle up to maximize any body heat that is released from each other.
Roosting high up:
The birds will also roost high up to stay warm.
While it is quite normal for a wild chicken to roost away from the ground somewhere high up to keep from predators, wild chickens will also roost high up in the winter to keep their feet off of the cold ground.
Wild birds are actually pretty good at flying and will thus fly up into trees and roost on the branches
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Chicken Sneezing When Eating, Why Your Chickens Head Doesn’t Move, Why Is My Duckling’s Neck Swollen?, Duck With A Twisted Foot, Chicken Shaking Head And Walking Backward, Do Chickens Shake When Scared?, Chicken Limping After Dog Attack, Chicken Trembling Legs, Rooster Shaking Legs