Chicken is useful for people. We eat almost every part of chicken and they can also be a pet. They produce delicious eggs, their meat give us enough protein and nutrition, and their feather also useful. But as reminder there are common bad habits of chicken you should know if you really want to keep one or more of them.
These bad habits can be challenge for farmers since it will affect both their health, mental condition, and productivities. So to understand more about chickens let us discuss it in this articles.
5 Common Bad Habits of Chicken You Should Know
If you are beginners on raising chicken then you have to learn how to take care of them. Why? Of course to keep your chickens grow healthy and productive. But ocassionally they have nasty habits and even worse. When these bad habits occured more often and impacting their life and of course their productivities then it is important for you to rectify their behavior. So let’s check out the list of common bad habit of chicken you should know as follows:
1. They like crossing the road
Okay this bad habits of chicken even made as jokes like for centuries. But if you ask why did they do that? There are several reasons of why they cross the road the most common one is that they are trying to search a better source of food. Another thing is that they have a magnetic sensors that works like a compass.
So we all know that road is dangerous for animals since there are so many transportation passing and this will increase the chance of they are getting hit by car, truck, bike, and so forth. Sometimes the loud noise also make the chicken confuse, that’s why they may take a risk decision like crossing to road to avoid this noisy sound. It’s better for you to avoid this by build a chicken coop as far as possible from the highway.
2. Fighting
Well this might be close to social act in chicken’s world. It’s kinda of how to maintain social hierarchy by selecting which one is better than others. For example if you introduce or bring a new chicken both rooster or hen they will create what we called pecking order. Instead of just small peck, it possible to lead into fighting and abusive one.
Like other group animals, chicken always have a leader in their flock. When you bring a new chicken they will try to maintain and claim their territory, and the new chicken should now their place. If they are strong enough they can be a new leader but the possibility is small, and if they don’t then they have to follow the leader. This is a common thing in animals world, what we have to prevent is in some case (certain chicken race) if they start to fight then they will fight till death unless you separate them. You must be carefull of this bad habits since it may leads your chicken to death. Such a great loss…
There are several way to prevent them form fighting or break this behavior such as provide them with food, mineral, and water in adequate ammount, debeaking, make them busy by giving toys, or isolate the aggresive chickens.
3. Eat their own egg
Yes, chicken is an omnivore and they will eat anything and even committing cannibalism by eating their own egg. This could be happened because chicken is smart, curious, and experimental animals. They like to try something new including of food. Sometimes it began by accident like they stepping on their egg until it break, and when they start to see the egg yolk they interested to taste it. Well, when they taste it they even want to eat more because its delicious.
You must try to prevent you chicken for doing this bad habits, because once they try it they will want more of it. And to make it worse other chickens may follow this behavior and it is kinda difficult to cure.
4. Laying egg on the floor
It is a common behavior of young hen, usually they lay eggs in floor or unusual places. These behavior will increasing the chance of your chicken’s crushed. The egg could rolling on the floor and easy to break. If the eggs break then the next case will arousing tendency of egg eating as mention before. So this behavior needs to stop.
For the young hen better to get close with the older one, so they can teach the young hen how to lay eggs in nesting place. And you must understand too that chickens are smart animals, they like to follow or try something new. When one hen lay their eggs in floor other hens in the flock will think its usual behavior. As predicted the other hens will imitate this bad habit.
To prevent or to break this habit you can collect eggs as soon as possible, give them with enough nesting boxes. The ratio of nesting boxes and chickens will be 1 boxes for 3 hens. And as the way to prevent them from egg eating we can place fake egg but with the different approach. We place the fake egg to show them the right place to lay eggs.
5. Sleep in the next boxes or in the floor
Chicken sometimes like to sleep in nest box or even in the floor. It’s not seem as bad habit, but do you know that it could affect their health seriously. And for the nest box, it will be a big problem since it will easily get dirty. Chickens do poop a lot, while nest box must be clean or at least as comfortable as it can. To clean the nest boxes everyday will give you a lot of effort. That is why it become a bad habit for chickens.
You need to stop these behavior to keep your chicken healthy and keep your coop smell fresh. To break this habit you can put the nest box in the lower level from the roost. Chicken like the higher place to take a sleep or roosting, it’s just a natural instinct.
Help them or teach them to roosting in their roost by gently lifting them up into the roost place. Teach them over and over and they will understand and adopt this behavior.
Well, that’s the example for 5 common bad habits of chicken you should know. You need to understand about this behavior and made an early warning when they begin to show one of these habits. Because the faster we known it the better and it will more easily to handled. And If you want to know more about chicken you can learn how to treat their infection and common diseases to make your chickens stay healthy, happy and productive.