Free-range hens are frequently provided enrichment to promote foraging behaviours and try to lower the frequency of harmful feather plucking. Studies have shown that hanging ropes, a traditional enrichment method for chickens, offers very little benefit.
Chickens benefit from enrichment, which allows them to exhibit instinctual behaviours in a natural environment, improving problem-solving skills and bone health. By providing enrichment, you can help your intelligent and curious birds explore the world around them and lead happy and healthy lives.
The key to ensuring the well-being of chickens is to offer them diverse enrichment activities to keep them mentally and physically stimulated.
It's important to keep chickens engaged by regularly changing their enrichment activities to avoid boredom. Ensure that any enrichment provided to chickens is safe and free from choking hazards or potential injuries. Chickens may need time to adjust to new enrichment activities, so keep offering them different options until they start to enjoy them.
Why is enrichment important?
It is possible to create a fun, engaging, and healthy space for your chickens with some imagination and effort. Chickens greatly benefit from an enriched environment, and these are some of the reasons why:
- Chickens require mental and physical stimulation to stay healthy and happy. Lack of stimulation can lead to problem behaviours such as feather picking or aggression.
- To allow chickens to express their natural behaviours, such as foraging, dust bathing, and pecking, enrichment can provide a safe and healthy outlet.
- To reduce stress and improve well-being, chickens need a safe and stimulating environment. Enrichment can help achieve this by addressing factors such as overcrowding, poor ventilation, and predators.
- Enrichment has been proven to enhance various aspects of chicken health, such as their immune system, egg-laying ability, and lifespan, resulting in an overall improvement in their health.
Aggressive behaviours
Hens suffering from a lack of enrichement will turn to aggressive behaviours. Pecking is assumed to be redirected foraging behaviour, especially in hens seeking more fibre in their food. Pecking can start as feather plucking but can progress to causing damage and cannibalism.
The aim is to direct pecking behaviours towards something more with a nutritional benefit. Hanging CDs, balls etc are ineffective since they do not shatter when pecked, which is a crucial component of simulating foraging, and they obviously have no nutritional value.
Enrichment ideas
There are a number of ways in which you aid enrichment for your flock, here are a couple of ideas to help keep your chicken's entertained.
- Use twine to hang vegetables in the coop
- Make a dust bath using an old car tyre
- Baby plastic teething rings covered in peanut butter, and hang in the coop
- Use a Pecking block
Read more: Backyard Chicken Enrichment: A guide for keeping the Happiest Chickens
The benefits of using a pecking block
A source of enrichment which provides nutritional value not only has a positive effect on behaviour but can also influence feed consumption, egg production and egg quality. Pecking stones are a good form of nutritional enrichment, some will help promote good gut health through nutrigenomics.
Pecking stones are a good form of nutritional enrichment, some will help promote good gut health through nutrigenomics.
