Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow Read Free Book Online Page B

immediate danger. The other chickens may run and hide, although a courageous cock, or occasionally a hen, may try to rescue the distressed bird by attacking the person or animal carrying it away.
Its meaning:
“Let go!”
Communicating with Chickens
    Cocks and hens have a larger vocabulary than that outlined in the previous pages. As a general rule, brief, soft, repetitive notes of low frequency are comfort calls. Loud harsh sounds with high frequencies are alarm cries. Harsh sounds emphasizing low frequencies are threats.
    An extremely dedicated person with lots of time on his or her hands and skill at imitating sounds (especially speaking other languages) could learn to communicate effectively with chickens on their own terms — I mean apart fromthe usual chicken-keeper talk, such as calling
chick, chick, chick
at treat time and having your chickens run over for an anticipated snack.
    Once, during a snowstorm, my husband and I discovered a strange cock in our backyard. We had no idea where he came from, but in the snow (which is uncommon here in Tennessee) he had no shelter and could find nothing to eat. We tried to catch him, but he would have nothing to do with us.
    At night he huddled in a tree, exposed to the cold wind. Since a cock doesn’t sleep with his head tucked under his wing, like a hen, he must have been pretty miserable. My husband fetched a ladder and tried to get him down from the tree, but the bird flew out of reach, then fluttered to the ground and ran into the dark.
    Next morning he was still there, although obviously colder and hungrier. While my husband went to get a handful of grain to try to coax him in, I stepped out the back door and in my best chicken voice gave the
tuck-tuck-tuck
food call. The rooster stretched his neck to listen, then raced toward the door just as my husband arrived in time to help me capture the bird and bring him in to warmth, shelter, and food. As I carried the rooster inside, my astonished husband turned to me and asked, “What did you say to him?!”
When the Cock Crows
    The chief characteristic of roosters is their crowing, and everyone seems to have an opinion about it. Some people love it, some hate it. Which side you fall on has a lot to do with whether or not you own the rooster doing the crowing.
    Why a rooster crows is a question without a definitive answer, because no one can get into the bird’s mind to find out what he’s thinking. Cocks certainly crow at first light, perhaps to announce the dawning of a new day or perhaps to proclaim, “I’m still here.” They may also crow during the dark of night, sometimes triggered by the sound of movement or a passing light, such as from a car or a switched-on porch light. They might believe an intruder is approaching, but instead of hushing up and laying low, they put on a loud show to warn off the intruder.
    Cocks crow in the daytime as well, presumably to put potential challengers on notice. During Europe’s Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), marauding soldiers carried cocks to help them find livestock that villagers had hidden in the forest. When the soldiers’ cock called out, the villagers’ roosters responded with “This territory is occupied,” thus giving away themselves and their comrades.
Anatomy of a Crow
    Nicholas E. Collias studied the crowing of the four species of jungle fowl: the green jungle fowl (
Gallus varius
) of Java, the red jungle fowl (
G. gallus
) of India; the gray jungle fowl (
G. sonnerati
) also of India; and the Ceylon jungle fowl(
G. lafayettei
) of Sri Lanka. He found that all crowing has considerable harmonic structure but each species has unique characteristics, differing in number of notes, length of crowing, accent on different notes, structure and pitch of notes, and interval between notes.
    The green jungle fowl has a two-note crow that is higher in pitch than the crowing of the other species. The Ceylon jungle fowl has a three-note crow that differs from the others in