Pecking order

Tweetypie

Tweetypie

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Just a quick one... Cindy has always had an odd habit of pecking at things. When I sat on my sun lounger last summer, she would stand and constantly peck the fabric. She stood pecking the shed, buckets etc. She used to stand and peck at Barbies beak. Yesterday and today I noticed that she is now pecking at Mabel's beak. I am surprised at this, as Mabel is the top bird, but she just stands there and allows Cindy to tip-tap at her beak for ages.
Is this normal or am I missing something?
PS She isn't doing it aggressively.
 
I suppose Mabel is allowing her to do it because she's not doing it aggressively. But other than that, I've no idea. I have seen chickens absently pecking at things. I've always just thought it's the chicken way of fidgeting! Or the equivalent of what we do when we snack even though we aren't hungry! Like crisps for chickens? Just something to do with her beak!
 
Your reminding me of Brownie who was one of our first chickens. A brown hybrid and unquestionably top hen although she never had to say so. The others would be all over her, beak pecking and practically sitting on top of her in a pile in the sun. It must have some meaning but will probably be one of those things only chickens understand!
 
We have a pair that peck each others beaks to clean the bits of feed off. They also preen each others necks to remove new feather sheaths. These are very old hens so perhaps its a behaviour that develops in time? All the cockerels have hens that preen them and it isn't necessarily the top hen.
 
I'm not so sure why, but it's not food related. She just tip taps their beaks, or like the sunlounger or the shed door. I think it's something to do with sound and hard surface. Its not all the time, but when she does it, it's for a good ten minutes or more. I'm surprised the receiving hen puts up with it so long. :roll:
 
Looks like you have a budding percussionist! Should take on Britain's Got Talent!
 
Their visual acuity is twice as good as ours so its quite possible they are sometimes seeing things that we can't. And I think some surfaces or tiny ultra violet reflective bits on fabric etc. gets them going - again invisible to us.
Grain scattered on a drum kit would be funny!
 
Well that’s funny because every morning at dawn there are a pair of ravens walking up and down the apex of my roof pecking at it. It sounds like they’re wearing hobnail boots. But they never return during the day, it’s only at dawn. I put it down to a personal vendetta though you’d think they’d be grateful because every year I put out my surplus, six week old, euthanised cockerels for them to eat.
 
?? well we used to get lots of noisy pigeons on our roof at the untimely 4am, until OH bought a powerful rifle.... ?
 
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