Understanding chicken talk
Chicken Talk By Karen Davis, PhD © This article originally appeared in the Young Friends section of the July 1994 issue of Best Friends Magazine.
Our rooster, Glippie, sings on the roof of his house, adding to the music of the yard a steady, quiet trill. Living with chickens has made me realize how tuneful and talkative these fascinating birds are. The language of chickens is an essential part of their personalities and of their highly developed social life. Chickens start talking even before they are born.
Peep! About twenty-four hours before a chick is ready to hatch, it starts peeping to notify its mother and siblings that it is ready to emerge from its shell. This activity, which biologists call "clicking," helps to synchronize the hatching of the baby chicks. A communication network is established among the chicks, and between the chicks and their mother, who must stay calm and unruffled for as long as two days while all the peeping, sawing, and breaking of eggs goes on underneath her. Since some of the chicks may have aborted in the shell during incubation, the peeps inform her how long she needs to continue sitting on the nest.
Peeps and clucks. As soon as all the eggs are hatched, the hungry mother and her brood go forth eagerly to eat, drink, scratch and explore. The chicks venture away from their mother, communicating back and forth all the while by peeps and clucks. The hen keeps track of her little ones by counting the peeps of each chick and noting the emotional tones of their voices.
When a chick becomes separated from its mother, it gives a distress call, and the mother hen dashes out to find it and, if the chick is in danger, to deliver it-hopefully-from the hole in the ground, tangled foliage, or threatening predator.
Nesting calls. When a hen is ready to lay an egg, she gives a pre-laying, or nesting, call, inviting her mate to join her in finding a nest site.
Together, the hen and rooster find and create a nest by pulling and flinging around themselves twigs, feathers, hay, leaves and loose dirt, after they have scraped a depression with their beaks and feet. But first comes the search.
Primeval grumbling growls and gentle squawks. When the rooster finds a place he likes (under a log, perhaps), he settles into it and rocks from side to side, while turning in a slow circle and uttering primeval grumbling growls which may or may not convince the hen that this is the place. She may accept it, or they may look for another site.
Throughout the search, the hen squawks gently with her beak open, followed by a series of short squawks of diminishing intensity, to keep the rooster coming back to her while she is away from the protection of the flock.
Egg cackles. Upon laying her egg, the hen gives out an egg cackle to announce her happy accomplishment. This brings the rooster quickly to her side, and together they rejoin the flock.
To human ears, the egg cackle resembles the chicken's cry of alarm, but to the birds there is a clear difference. A hen with chicks will continue feeding during the egg call, but will dart for cover when the alarm call goes out.
The "come over here" squawk. Often I have heard one of our hens call out to her rooster partner: "I'm all alone. Get over here!" Our normally quiet hen, Petal, raises a ruckus if her adored Jules is out of her sight for long, even if she has not just laid an egg. Her otherwise demure little voice becomes SQUAWK, SQUAWK, SQUAWK. Jules lifts his head up, straightens up, mutters to himself in what can only be described as Chicken Talk, and does an about-face. Off he goes to comfort Petal. Silence.
