Mary Allen
When chickens scratch for something to eat, a brown stain quickly appears on the beautiful lawn. The problem can be mitigated by cleverly designing the outlet.
For chickens, it is the most normal thing in the world, but for the owner, it is one of the rather unpopular behaviors of his charges: scratching. It is an innate drive across all chicken breeds. The animals scrape the ground alternately with their right and left feet. They hurl away loose pieces of soil powerfully in order to dig hollows for lying down or sand bathing. Or to search for hidden food. Roots are uncovered and the various herbs are pulled out – and usually eaten right away.
What chickens do with delight annoys the chicken keeper all the more. Because the previously lush green lawn usually suffers a lot of damage. Once the chickens manage to scrape a small patch of grass, there is usually no stopping them. In no time the small brown spot has turned into a large one and the turf is in danger of being destroyed even more extensively. If you don’t intervene now, the once beautiful green outlet will quickly become a desolate wasteland.
In the Wet, it Can be Scratched Well
There are various ways to prevent this. One of them is to divide the run into two zones. Preferably, the hen house is in the middle and the hen door is set up in such a way that the hens can be let out into one zone or the other in the simplest possible way. And that’s the highlight: The hens are only allowed to use one of the two run-out zones, the other can recover during this time. If there are several consecutive rainy days, it is also advisable to only let the chickens on the forecourt of the chicken house and not on the lawn. If the subsoil is very soft, the animals have an easy time scratching up the earth’s surface.
Regardless of whether you maintain a single run or a zoned run, the area available to the hens must be appropriate for their group size. According to current specialist books, laying hens should be able to let off steam in a run of five to ten square meters (per hen). In the Swiss Animal Welfare Act, on the other hand, there is no information at all on the optimal size of a chicken run. This is in contrast to the space available in the chicken coop. In the end, however, the effective size of the area is less important than the design of the outlet.
If none or only a small area of the run is green, everything that can be eaten is immediately scraped out and the chickens begin to dig holes. However, if the lawn or the turf is without gaps, the chickens have a harder time. If the run also has interesting elements such as bushes, shrubs, trees and if you also equip it with perches and dust baths (e.g. boxes filled with fine sand), this ensures variety in everyday chicken life. This allows the animals to do a variety of things. And what is also very important: The chickens can avoid each other if necessary. This relieves stress and leads to a calmer coexistence in the yard.
Right Leg First
If possible, put a berry bush in the run. During the ripening period, it provides the chickens with fruit rich in vitamins. They insist on picking as many berries as possible – even if this involves a great deal of effort for them. For example, a chicken standing in front of a currant bush and jumping up to the berries hanging overhead is a not-so-uncommon sight.
So the main reason for scratching is easy to find. The chickens do it first and foremost in order to be able to pursue their favorite pastime in the most efficient way possible: foraging. In Joseph Barber’s book “The Chicken” you can read that a chicken always scratches with one leg first, then alternately with both legs.
Usually, the chicken starts with the right one. This is for a very specific reason. When scratching with its right foot, the chicken always uses its right eye to look for potential food on the ground. This communicates with the left hemisphere of the brain, and this in turn tells the chicken whether the object found is edible or not. As a result, the chicken knows immediately whether it has to peck immediately afterward. If it is an insect, it is often essential to act quickly, otherwise, the supposed victim will flee. Or even worse, the worm will be stolen by another chicken.
However, chickens also scratch when they are impatient or even embarrassed, as Carlheinrich Engelmann, former department head of the Institute for Agricultural Experiments and Research in Jena, writes in his book “Life and Behavior of Our Domestic Poultry”. There are also chickens that make scratching movements while pecking food from the feeder instead of searching for it in the ground. This phenomenon underscores the evolutionary importance of scratching.
As already mentioned, scratching is also part of another innate behavior, sand or dust bathing – probably the most pronounced comfort and wellness drive in a chicken. When taking a dust bath, it first scratches and digs a hollow in the sand or in the dry soil. With further, strong scratching movements, it hurls sand, earth, or litter onto its feathers. The heel joint is strongly flexed. The sand and dust particles settle in the plumage. Then the chicken pecks at the ground with its beak and sits down in the hollow so that the front of the body lies completely in it, while the back and tail parts stick out high at the back. The hollow is made bigger. With the help of rolling movements, the chickens turn on their side or back so that they end up facing the opposite direction. The head is always as upright as possible. Afterward, the bath is enjoyed for about 30 minutes more or less motionless, sitting or lying down, and finally left. At the very end, the chicken frees its feathers from sand and dust by shaking it vigorously and at the same time arranges its feathers again.
You Need Strong Feet to Scratch
Chickens have well-developed thighs as they are on their feet practically all day running and pawing around. This requires strong legs and toes. But how are these structured? Tight skin with poorly developed subcutaneous tissue sits on the legs. On the toes, however, the epidermis is thick and heavily calloused. The toes are at the end of the lower leg.
Most chickens have four toes. The three forward-pointing toes are spread wide apart. The fourth toe points backward. With this positioning of the toes, chickens have a good footing.
Some breeds have a fifth toe, these are the Dorkings, Houdans, and Silkies. The fifth toe sits next to the fourth on the inside of the barrel. It has no real function. However, since it points diagonally upwards, it does not impede the animals. According to Alfred Mehner, Director of the Federal Research Center for Small Animal Breeding in Celle (D), one cannot actually speak of a fifth toe, because in his opinion it is much more a doubling of the hallux, which consists of the so-called metatarsal bones of the first toe or the hallux on the inner side of the foot.