Chickens can be a wonderful addition to your backyard whether you’re living in a suburban area or the countryside. However, your birds can still express strange behavior like jumping on each other.
This article explores why your chickens may be jumping on each other.
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Why do chickens jump on each other?
Raising chickens is a fun and enjoyable experience but this can turn into a scary experience if the birds start behaving in a way that is different from how they usually are, like jumping on each other.
Here are reasons why your chickens may be jumping on each other:
The pecking order:
The pecking order not only affects people working in the office environment, it also affects chickens. Infact, the term was made up to describe the social hierarchy of chickens.
The pecking order is how chickens are ranked in the flock. The strongest and largest will be at the top and the weaker and smallest birds will be at the bottom.
Birds that are higher up have access to food and water first because they bully the weaker birds away.
Birds determine who is ranked where in the order by fighting and one way of showing dominance when fighting another bird is by jumping on the other bird.
Other ways that these birds will fight and show dominance include chest pumping, having staring contests, and flying on top of each other’s heads. This is all perfectly normal and should be expected.
If you’ve added a new bird to the flock then the flock will have to determine where the new bird belongs on the pecking order by fighting
What to do:
There isn’t anything that you as a human can do if your birds are fighting to determine who is who in the pecking order, in fact, you as a human shouldn’t be doing anything.
The birds will fight with each other and even peck at each other as they try to figure out who goes where.
You’d only need to intervene if a bird is injured to a point where it develops a pecking sore and starts bleeding.
If your bird has a pecking sore then isolate the injured bird to keep it from being pecked even more and apply pressure using a clean towel or gauze to stop the bleeding.
Also, clean the wound using Vetericyn plus poultry care spray.
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: Why Is My Chicken Hiding During The Day?, Chicken Hiding In A Corner, Why Is My Chicken Hiding Her Head?, Why Do Chickens Jump On Your Back?, Why Is My Chicken Hanging Her Head?, Chicken Standing Still With Eyes Closed
