Your Flock’s Pecking Order and Managing Pecking Order Issues

“Every bird is a personality…Any one bird…is absolutely distinct in character and in the manifestations of character from any other bird”
—Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe

“There are no two individual birds of any given species which, when living together, do not know which of the two has precedence and which is subordinate”
—Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe

Back in my early days of keeping chickens, my flock consisted of sixteen chickens. Emile and Paul filled the rooster boxes on the flock org chart in those days. Emile’s box was above Paul’s, and the two boxes were connected by a vertical line.

To put it another way, Emile was the top banana. Paul, the sad little frizzled bantam roo, was the bottom banana. What that meant was that Emile got to have his way with the all the ladies, all the time and whenever he wanted; he got to eat and drink whenever he felt like it; and he got the prime roosting position in the very middle of the very top rung of the roost. Paul didn’t get any of those things. Also, on occasion, Emile would chase Paul around the coop because he thought Paul was flirting with one of his girls, or he thought Paul was not showing proper deference, or maybe just because he was in a foul (um…fowl?) mood. This dynamic and this behavior went on every day for the entire time these two guys lived in the same coop at the same time.

The fourteen hens had their own org chart. It was quite a bit more complicated and more dynamic than the rooster org chart because there were a whole lot more hens interacting with each other. I knew in general who the top hens and bottom hens were, but actually making a list of hens from top to bottom would have been very difficult due to subtle social interactions and occasional reshuffling. But it was pretty obvious that the four Barred Rocks, all intelligent, curious, and adventurous, were the ruling elite. And I was also fairly sure that the order of those top four hens was almost alphabetical. Friendly, social Arlene, who always ran up to me and playfully pecked me on the leg whenever I entered the coop was the alpha hen. Behind Arlene was Charlie, the largest and loudest of the four. Then came Barbara, the really smart one. And finally, there was Darcy…the other one.

With My Flock Leader, Arlene

Roosting time was the best time to watch flock dynamics. Emile went to bed early in his chosen spot in the middle of the top rung. And one by one the hens jump onto the roost to join him. Each hen would cautiously work her way up the various levels of the roost to the top. Once there, she would carefully examine the hens already in place to see if there was a hen near her status that she could roost next to. If the top rung was already full, she would look for a hen she could displace.

When a hen was not happy with the hen next to her, she would not-so-subtly shove her body against her neighbor to force her to move. If that strategy didn’t work, she would casually peck the other hen’s toes. The pecking would escalate to the body, the neck, the head, and finally the comb. Combs are sensitive, vulnerable, and bleed easily, so the conflict would usually end before it reached that point. The lower-status hen would reluctantly move to a lower rung. On rare occasions the lower hen would peck back. Sometimes a full-scale hen fight would ensue, which could end with Emile’s intervention.

And while all this shuffling and sorting played out, the Barred Rocks would be nonchalantly scratching and pecking around the coop floor. They knew that when they decided to go to bed, they would roost any old place they wanted to.

This bedtime ritual is just one manifestation of the law of the coop—the pecking order. Those of us who have lived our entire lives in a democracy may take offense at the unfairness of high-ranking chickens bossing around the flock underdogs. But that’s the system. And without a system there would be constant bloody anarchy.

Pecking Order

In the 1960’s, when I was a Minnesota farm kid, I was sometimes tasked with collecting eggs from our flock of white leghorns. I wasn’t terribly interested in this flock of identical white birds and I was clueless that when I walked into the chicken house with my egg basket, I was blundering into a complex society with lots of moving parts. There were all sorts of social interactions occurring constantly right in front of my unseeing eyes. I was completely unaware that these birds that I couldn’t tell apart viewed each other as individuals, that they had their own social structure, and that each hen knew exactly where she fit within the hierarchy of that structure.

In the early 1900’s, in Norway, there was another kid with chickens. His attitude towards his flock was completely opposite from mine. Young Thorleif was fascinated by the chickens that his parents had given him and spent hours watching them interact. In 1921, Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe used the observations that he had collected since childhood on the dominance hierarchy in chickens as the basis for his doctoral dissertation. Since his doctoral paper was published in German, he used the term “Hackordnung” to describe this chicken behavior. When his paper was published in English in 1927, this term was translated as “pecking order.” “Pecking order” has now seeped into popular usage to the point that it not only describes social interaction in people, but also an economic theory, a card game, and a chicken restaurant in Florida. As a matter of fact, the term has become such a part of the common lexicon that most people have forgotten, or never knew, that it has anything to do with chickens.

Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe
Oslo Museum/Creative Commons

Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe’s important insights into pecking order in chickens, and eventually the hierarchical structure of animal societies in general, resulted from his recognition that each animal is a distinct individual. By recognizing individuals, he was able to make note of how individual chickens interacted with other individuals and with the larger group as a whole. In the one hundred years since his pioneering work, other researchers, working with a variety of animal species have shown that any group of anonymous, identical-appearing animals is actually a diverse assemblage of individuals with different personalities, including different dominance tendencies. Behavioral ecology is now an established scientific field, where scientists study things like variation in behavioral tendency, social phenotypes and fitness outcomes. This robust field of science exists because a ten-year-old kid paid attention to his chickens. Thanks, Thorleif!

Dominance Hierarchy: The Basics

In the over-one-hundred-years of research since Schjelderup-Ebbe’s original work, scientists have learned a lot about how animals interact in a dominance hierarchy. Here are the basics:

Chickens, and all other species of animals that live in social groups have a dominance hierarchy—a pecking order. One of the most common and more simple hierarchy structures in social animals is linear, where each individual has a clear rank from the most dominant to the most submissive. Chickens follow this type of ranking system. In a flock of chickens with both hens and roosters, there will be an alpha hen and an alpha rooster and a pecking order for hens and a separate one for the roosters.

Chicken hierarchies form through interactions between pairs of individuals, called dyads, where one chicken asserts dominance and the other submits These interactions don’t always involve actual physical fights—sometimes all that is needed to establish rank is the threat of aggression. These dyad encounters first occur when chicks are quite young. In groups of chicks, there is a pecking order by 10 weeks of age in pullets and somewhat earlier among cockerels. Once it is established, the pecking order remains fairly stable, but it can be thrown into disarray when new chickens are introduced. Rank reshuffling can also occur when something affects flock dynamics—such as the illness, death or removal of a flock member. Also, if a hen is temporarily removed from the flock for a couple of weeks, when she is reintroduced, her flock-mates treat her like a new hen. Since her removal caused changes in the pecking order, her old spot has disappeared. So, when she is reintroduced, she and her flock-mates have to work out where she belongs all over again.

A dyad challenge looks something like this: A hen who is dominant, (or maybe she is low-ranking, arrogant, and in denial), holds her head high and swaggers directly toward another hen. For some extra flair, she may also flap her wings. The challenged hen may think the challenger is all cluck and no action. In this case, the challenged hen responds to this perceived poser by putting on her “angry bird” face and pecking, chasing, or leaping at the challenger. The challenger then fights back. Or, she runs away thus cementing her status as the lower bird in this dyad.

Or, on the other hand, the challenged hen could realize from the get-go that the challenger really is one tough cookie. Then, she would confirm her subordinance by retreating, squatting, or staying motionless. After just a few interactions, or maybe only one, the dominance ranking in this dyad is a done deal.

Dyad encounters can range from relatively harmless to potentially life-threatening. Pecking, the key element in these encounters, can be mild pecks to the feet, legs, or body, escalating to severe pecks to the body in conjunction with the ripping out of feathers, all the way to hard wounding pecks to the head and comb. Wounded birds attract more pecks from other flock mates. In extreme cases, this can escalate to gang violence, cannibalism, and death.

But such violence is rare. And once established, a flock’s pecking order, which is really a string of dyads, tends to remain stable with relatively few aggressive incidents. An established pecking order means that everybody in the flock coexists peacefully. But it does not mean that everybody in the flock coexists equally. A chicken’s position in the hierarchy directly impacts her ability to access resources like food, nest boxes, and perching spots.

The Adventures of Arlene

One June evening, I found Arlene Barred Rock sitting alone in the run after the other chickens had gone indoors to roost. Arlene was my alpha hen. She was active, inquisitive, and a member in good standing with the junta of Barred Rocks who ruled the roost. She always ran up to greet me with a friendly peck to the leg whenever I entered the coop. Now, Arlene was just sitting there on the ground. I knew something was very wrong.

I had arrived home from an out-of-town trip just before chicken bedtime and when I first saw her, I wasn’t even sure it was Arlene. For a moment I wondered if somebody had sneaked a bedraggled old hen with huge patches of missing feathers into my coop. The hen I found in the run looked like an old and exhausted version of Arlene. She didn’t seem eager to move and when she finally got up, I saw that she was walking with a profound limp—hardly putting any weight on her right foot. I scooped her up, carried her into the barn and gave her a quick physical exam.

She didn’t look like a sick bird. Her eyes were bright and clear, there was no discharge from her beak or nostrils, I didn’t see any poopy feathers around her vent that would indicate diarrhea, and there was no sign of lice or mites. A close examination of her right leg didn’t show any wounds or broken bones. Perhaps a sprain? Had she caught her leg in something and sprained it while wrenching it free?

She was definitely missing patches of feathers, though. While hens can undergo an unseasonable molt if they’re stressed, I suspected that her feathers had been yanked out. Pulled-out feathers would go along with the other thing I noticed—her comb was covered with scabs, undoubtedly due to hard pecks.

Arlene had been in a fight. The scenario that formed in my mind was that Queen Arlene had somehow become injured, and some lower ranking hen or hens decided that this would be an opportunity for them to usurp the throne.

I put Arlene in a crate. It was a tiny space, but it would keep her from using her leg for a bit. And since it was bedtime, a night’s rest followed by a reevaluation the next day seemed like the best course to follow.

The next day I kept Arlene in the crate all day, with frequent check-ins for treats, pets, and moral support. Arlene seemed fine. She was bright-eyed and eager to get out of the crate every time I took her out. But when I put her down on the floor, she walked with a severe limp.

I didn’t want to keep her sequestered from the flock for too long, nor did I want to keep her locked in the crate for an extended period of time. So, after a day in the crate, I decided to put her back in the coop with the other hens at bedtime. When Arlene limped back into the coop, most of the hens didn’t react at all. But there were a few that did, and it was interesting to see who they were. Arlene’s “friends”, Barbara and Charlie Barred Rock strutted right up. They were not offering condolences. “Arlene!” They sneered. “You’ve been gone! You’re limping! Remember your nice spot on the top rung of the roost? Well, honey, it’s gone! How ‘bout you be gone, too!” Of course, chickens don’t really talk. What they were actually doing was aggressively pecking Arlene.

I was shocked. I didn’t expect the other Barred Rocks to be the mean girls. And, of course, they weren’t mean girls. They were just acting out the dictates of the pecking order. I realized that a re-sorting of the pecking order was happening and that there was nothing I could do about it. But I didn’t want the situation to get out of hand, so I got between the mean girls and sad Arlene. Then, I waited it out in the coop as the chickens, one by one, found a place on the roost for the night. Arlene eventually found a spot low on the roost by herself. And the lights went out.

I got up early the next morning, but not early enough to be up with the chickens. By the time I got to the coop bad things were happening. The mean girls were bullying. Yeah, they weren’t really mean girls, but when I saw how they were treating sweet Arlene, that label stuck. Arlene was constantly on the move to avoid their attention and her limp was becoming more pronounced. Her comb was bleeding in several places from hard pecks.  I said a few words under my breath and snatched Arlene out of the coop. Instead of putting her back in the crate, I put her in the triangle pen- a small pen built into the corner of the coop, where she would have some room to move around, and where she could keep tabs on her old coop, right on the other side of the fence. This was going to be a long-term stay.

Q: How Smart Are Chickens? (A: Really Smart!)

For a pecking order to work, each chicken has to be able to recognize every other chicken in her flock as a unique individual, and understand how she relates to each one of them. She has to be pretty smart to do that. It has been shown that there’s another way that chickens work out the pecking order, and the second way proves that chickens are amazingly smart—smarter than human children.

In a 1996 Canadian study, hens witnessed a familiar hen dominant to them being defeated by a strange hen. When later introduced to the stranger, they did not challenge her. This suggests they understood that if the stranger could defeat someone who had previously dominated them, they were unlikely to win.

Then, the hens saw a familiar hen dominant to them defeat a stranger. When introduced to the stranger, they attacked half of the time, indicating they recognized that they had a chance of winning.

This study suggests that hens can assess their own status in the pecking order by observing how others interact with a familiar dominant hen. This type of deductive reasoning is called “transitive inference.” Transitive inference allows someone to determine relationships between items that have not been directly compared. For example, if A is larger than B and B is larger than C, then one can infer that A is larger than C. The ability to use transitive inference has been demonstrated in a number of animals, including humans. In humans, it usually emerges sometime after the age of seven!

Riding Flock: Handling Pecking Order Problems

In most flocks, most of the time, the members of the flock establish a pecking order and peacefully maintain it all by themselves. But sometimes, something gets out of whack, and you need to intervene, exert some control, and do what you can to get things back on track.

Cowboys who ride their horses in and around a herd of cattle to maintain control, to keep them together, and to keep them moving cohesively in the same direction call their activity “riding herd.” I suggest that there are times when you need to exert some control over your hens. To coin a term, I’m going to call that “riding flock.” Here are some suggestions for riding flock in your coop.

Give Them Space!

Many large commercial poultry operations have major problems with pecking. Most commercial operators solve the pecking problem by the cruel practice of debeaking their hens. Hens peck excessively for a variety of reasons, and addressing those underlying reasons is a more humane solution than cutting off half of their beaks. One large, obvious problem in poultry factory farms is overcrowding. Overcrowded hens are aggressive hens. Aggressive hens peck. Give your hens plenty of space! It’s humane, it’s simple, and it’s easy to do!

Appropriate Introductions Are Important

Check with Emily Post and you’ll discover that there are important considerations in introducing people in a smooth and courteous way. Chicken introductions also benefit from certain considerations. To avoid trauma and excessive violence during the hazing period, make the introduction gradual. Keep the new arrivals visible but separated for a while, so everybody can adjust. When everybody finally gets together in the same coop at the same time, stick around! That way you’ll be there to intervene should things go awry.

Adequate Coop Furnishings

Inadequate space causes conflict related to overcrowding. By the same token, insufficient coop equipment causes crowding around the equipment and also leads to conflict. Rule of thumb: A water fount and a feeder for every ten chickens; a nest box for every four hens; a foot of roost space for each chicken.

Quarantine Sick or Injured Birds

Chickens are social animals and don’t like being removed from their friends. But sometimes it becomes necessary. Sick or injured birds often get picked on by one or more of their “friends” at their first sign of weakness. It’s all about moving up in the pecking order! Keep your eyes open for birds who are under the weather, and if they’re being picked on, remove them so they can recover on their own.

Handling the Death or Removal of a Bird

The illness, death or removal of a flock member opens up a spot in the pecking order and reshuffling will occur. There will be some interactions as this reshuffling takes place. Keep your eyes open for excessive bullying or aggression.

Managing Bullying

If a hen is bullying others, consider temporarily separating the bully or the victim, depending on the situation.

By understanding and managing pecking order issues, you can maintain a peaceful and well-balanced flock. But remember that while you can attempt to manage your flock’s pecking order, there will always be a pecking order. There will always be a top bird and there will always be a bird on the bottom.

The Further Adventures of Arlene

Arlene spent six weeks living on her own. Her home base was the triangle pen. But since it was a small space, I left the door open to the main part of the barn so she could have some space to wander. Whenever I went into the barn, she was always glad to see me and would run across the barn to greet me with a few pecks to the leg. At first it was a very gimpy run, but as time went on it became smoother; proof that her leg was healing. And at the same time her bald patches filled in with new feathers.

Arlene - Living On Her Own

By early August, I decided the time had come to put Arlene back into the coop. I knew there would be a hazing as she reintegrated herself into the pecking order. But now she was healthy, able to hold her own, and able to run away if necessary.

But before reintroducing her, I made a change in the coop. The roost was a friction point. There were four levels, and everybody wanted to roost on the top. And there was just no way the entire flock would fit on the top rung. So I enlarged length of the top rung by adding a section of two-by-four from the top rung across the coop to the opposite wall. It wasn’t ideal for me since the new roost bar divided the coop in two and created an obstacle that I had to duck under every time I walked through the coop. But, from the chickens’ perspective, the new roost bar effectively doubled their “high up” space.

Then, right at roosting time, I swung the corner pen door open, and Arlene ambled in to rejoin the flock for a second time. By the time everybody was ready to go to sleep, Arlene was peacefully sitting on the new part of the roost with a few other hens and everybody was interacting like they were a living representation of “Peaceable Kingdom.”

And, oh yeah, I did one other thing. After I swung the door open for Arlene to go into the coop, I scattered some scratch grain in the triangle pen. Barbara and Charlie Barred Rock sauntered into the small pen to investigate this fascinating treat, and once they were in, I closed the door. Arlene was with the flock and the mean girls were separated!  Barbara and Charlie leisurely pecked at the grain at first. It was only when grain was all gone and it was time to roost that they realized they were trapped. They pecked forlornly at the fence separating the pens for quite a while, with Charlie, the verbose one, complaining bitterly the entire time.

Eventually the automatic lights went out. I found them the next morning morosely roosting in the triangle pen. For the next two weeks, they roosted there at night and during the day I gave them access to the main part of the barn, as I’d done for Arlene.

And then, after two weeks, I opened the door and the two Barred Rock girls walked back into the coop. Now there was a role reversal. Instead of being the top bananas, these two hens were the new kids. Fortunately, and surprisingly, there was no violence. I didn’t even witness any pecks. Everybody said hi in the way that chickens say hi and that was it.

And with interactions so subtle that I didn’t even notice them, Charlie quickly became the top hen once again. Barbara was number two. Arlene, back to full health and no longer limping, was somewhere in the middle. And everybody seemed content with their roles. And they lived happily ever after.

Arlene, Charlie and Barbara

Dénouement

This story, as I mentioned, played out in the early days of my flock. So, you’re probably wondering “What happened next? Did they really live happily ever after? What happened to Arlene, Barbara and Charlie? So here’s the rest of the story.

The flock continued on and continues on today. The chickens lived each day at a time, pecking, scratching, dust bathing, wandering the run, and laying eggs, as chickens do. Chickens passed away and new chickens came, as is the case with every flock.

Charlie, who was always large, vocal, and full of herself, became even larger, more vocal and even more self-satisfied as the top hen. As the ruler, she got to eat first, and she ate lots! She ruled her flock with an iron beak and with the pomp and authority of an empress. As she became more corpulent, she probably would have preferred the other hens carry her around in a gilded litter. That, of course, never happened. But eventually, I, her humble servant, started lifting her off the roost each morning – she had become so large she was having problems getting down on her own. Then one day, a couple of years into her reign, I found her lifeless body under the roost—she no doubt had succumbed to a massive, fatal heart attack.

Barbara ascended the throne. Barbara, during her sovereignty, instituted an activity that I called “the chicken stampede.” The barn is at the foot of a hill. The house is at the top of that hill. In between is a half-acre chicken run. Barbara would keep and eagle eye on the house, waiting for me to come out and head towards the barn. When I did, I would often be carrying a few chicken treats. Why passively wait for those treats when you could run toward the treats-bearer, be the first chicken to arrive, and be sure to snag some treats? When Barbara saw me coming, she would squawk, jump and lead the entire flock in a full-bore charge up the hill. I was surprised the first time this happened, but when it became standard practice, I was amused and only a little intimidated each time I was engulfed by a thundering herd of squawking hens.

One day as seven-year-old Barbara was leading the flock of mostly younger hens up the hill, she collapsed. I rushed to where she had fallen, picked her up, and she died in my arms. Valerie the Wyandotte, a much younger hen, ascended the throne and still leads the flock today. Arlene passed away peacefully and happily at the age of nine. She’d outlived both of her usurpers.