A chicken’s sleeping pattern has become an interest for many people since chickens don’t follow the same routine as humans. A common question about chicken is their sleeping time.
Do chickens sleep during the day? Chickens will sometimes sleep during the day if they didn’t sleep enough at night. This behavior is generally normal, since noise or other factors may have kept them awake. Chickens may also prefer to sleep in the warm sun or take frequent naps to re-energize.
Observe your chickens for symptoms such as strange movement, breathing problems, loss of appetite, egg-laying pattern changes, or other unusual behavior. It may relate to an illness. Check with your local veterinarian if you notice anything different or odd about your chicken.
Just like any living creature, sleep plays a significant role in promoting excellent health and functioning at the maximum level. Without enough sleep, people and animals are prone to illness and can be dysfunctional throughout the day. Regardless of the time, living creatures can bring themselves to sleep – intentional or not.
All About Chickens
Chickens are classified as birds but are not capable of flying. Often, they are considered as domesticated animals, but feral ones are also spotted in some areas. They are kept on farms because of their eggs and meat, which is in high demand around the world.
Fascinatingly, chickens practice this so-called “pecking order”. Meaning, they also practice dominance in the group. These leading chickens have the benefit of getting food and choose their own nest first before everyone else.
Hens, a female chicken, are often seen living in a group and looks after their own brood. Sometimes, they are seen residing in small houses called chicken coop. Some hens are placed in a small cage for industrial purposes; these types of hens are called “battery hens”. On the other hand, some freely roam around the vicinity.
The Personality of a Chicken
Like any living creature, chickens also have a distinct personality that makes them interesting. They are intelligent and social creatures that enjoy spending days together. Also, they have these social hierarchies and interact in a sophisticated manner – an act that is observed to be their own culture. They are aware of their community’s success and failure.
To interact with other chickens, they are heard with their “clucks”. They have their own unique calls to warn other chickens for potential danger. In actuality, they have a distinguished call for a threat from land and those threats appearing over water.
Like other animals, they also look out for their families and other chickens in the group. As observed in feral chickens, they do things together: searching food, taking dust baths, and perching in tall trees or bushes at nighttime.
Learn Through Observation
Another interesting trait of a chicken is that they tend to learn based on observing other chickens. They can manage self-control and have their own set of cultural knowledge past from one generation to another.
Lastly, like other creatures, chickens are observed to have their own unique personality, based on their pecking order. Some are found to be fearless, while others are shy and keener on their surroundings. Some chickens enjoy socializing with humans, yet others try to stay away or act aggressively towards people.
A Chicken’s Sleeping Pattern
Sleep serves as a fundamental requirement for humans and animals to energetically move around after accumulating enough rest. While sleep itself is an interesting study with baffling reasoning behind spending time sleeping, digging more in-depth about birds’ sleeping patterns is a topic filled with curiosity.
Birds have gradually developed a sleeping pattern similar to that of mammals without the influence of other creatures. They have developed this change on their own; while reptiles and amphibians, who are closely related to birds, differ in terms of their sleeping regimen.
Once birds undergo deep sleep, they experience rapid eye movement (REM) for a few seconds. It’s a normal eye movement that indicates how a brain maintains to be active when dreaming.
Sleep Deprivation on Chickens
With chickens’ sensitive senses, hearing noise can easily startle them and make them wary of their surroundings before going back to sleep. However, despite the sound, chickens are capable of recuperating from lack of sleep.
They can go into deep sleep later on when the background’s peaceful enough. This results in being highly vulnerable to predators; hence, it’s best to keep them in an area where they’re out of reach from danger or provide them a place for them to perch at night comfortably.
Do Chickens Sleep Standing Up?
Often, chickens are seen nestling off the ground and eventually fall asleep right on the spot. The thing about chickens is they manage to shut themselves off to deep sleep, to the point wherein they become open to predators.
As they go to sleep, they are in a state of blankness – utterly unaware of their surroundings. Therefore, they prefer to perch while sleeping, but not stand up.
An interesting fact about chickens is that once they find a comfortable place to perch every night, they mark it as their favorite spot. They will go back to this spot even if they have escaped or roamed around the area during the day.
Can Chickens Sleep in the Rain?
Chickens see rain as a good day for them to hunt more than usual since they see this as an opportunity to camouflage themselves from predators. However, when they are asleep, they’re not that bothered with the said weather, especially when it’s light rain.
They usually stay on the same spot, unless the rain becomes heavy or if there’s a thunderstorm. Overall, rain doesn’t disrupt a chicken’s sleep; yet, if you have chickens at home, it’s best to provide them with cover in their favorite perch area.
Can Chickens Survive in the Wild?
Often, people see chicken as a domesticated animal that can freely wander if permitted by the owner. There are times wherein it escapes from the owner and openly walks outside the premises, but they are highly adaptable to areas where people can still provide them shelter and food.
Domesticated chickens do not stand a chance in the wild. The primary reason for this is that they don’t know about wilderness survival. Although they can temporarily be safe in certain areas, that doesn’t give them the assurance to fend off or escape from predators such as coyotes and foxes.
Feral chickens, on the other hand, are capable of living in the wild. They tend to find food and shelter without being caught by predators as much as possible. However, if they are located in an area with high rates of predators, chickens stand a lesser chance of surviving for an extended period.
Where Do Chickens Sleep in the Wild?
Just like the domesticated ones, feral chickens find comfort in areas that set them off the ground. They prefer to roost in tall trees or bushes to protect themselves against predators at night.
They elevate themselves as a defense mechanism since they become unaware of their surroundings once they engage themselves in a deep sleep. The attitude portrayed by both domesticated and wild chickens is, more or less, the same.
Is It Okay for Chickens to Sleep on the Ground?
Even though chickens are known to roost at night to protect themselves from possible predators, sleeping on the ground isn’t considered as taboo in their practice.
While most chickens prefer to doze off roosting off the ground, some chickens prefer to sleep on the ground. Some chickens don’t roost until they’re older, while they are just those that prefer to be on the ground.
Training Your Chicken to Sleep off the Ground
If you prefer your chickens to stay off the ground at night, you can train them to do so. Some chickens are just unaware of how they should act; therefore, they often have their own ways of sleeping, which is not generally observed in most chickens.
The first step you can do to correct this is to bring them into their perch during nighttime. If the chickens jump off, put them back gently. This method may be a long, tedious process, but chickens will eventually get accustomed to this practice and realize that it’s what they’re supposed to do.
Young chickens have difficulty in hooking their claws on a large roost. That’s why it’s best to prepare a good size for them to get a perfect grip. Of course, this is especially important for them not to slip off the roost while they’re deeply asleep.
If these steps mentioned above are proven to be a failure, you can resort to putting them in the coop for three days, more or less, until they become adaptable to such training.
Conclusion – Do Chickens Sleep During the Day?
Chickens are bird creatures incapable of flying. Most of the chickens observed in the community classify as tame, but wild chickens are also observed in some areas. They are mostly domesticated because of their eggs and meat, which is an important source of protein for most people.
Chickens are fascinating creatures with their own set of standards in surviving. Although commonly seen as a domesticated animal, they still tend to protect themselves from possible predators as they bring themselves into a deep sleep. Instead of lying on the ground, they prefer to roost off the ground since they’re aware of how vulnerable they are once asleep.