We were slightly alarmed today to see our barn broodies having a right ole’ scrap!! We were mucking out the cows and became aware of a bit of a commotion at the back of the barn and when we went to investigate, we found stressed chicks scattered amongst the straw and their two ‘mums’ having a serious pecking match. Chickens are quite ferocious with their beaks and in keeping with most animals when they scrap, they use their strongest feature (in their case their beaks) to attack the weakest feature of their opponent (in the case of a chicken, faces and combs). A chicken comb bleeds a lot and so it was pretty obvious to us which one was winning as that was the bird covered in the ‘least’ amount of blood. The losing bird was actually the oldest, an Indian Game cross from 3 years ago (pictured above PR- fight) and ironically the most ferocious with us! They did stop fighting and the winner ‘claimed victory’ by settling down with ALL the chicks, leaving the loser to lick her wounds (metaphorically).
Despite all this, at nighttime, both adults were snuggled up with all five chicks in the cat basket as usual!!!