Chicken... or Duck Leadership?

During our time at home we found it fascinating to observe our little flock of chickens and compare them with our ducks. It's been a lot of fun, and we have learned a lot as we observed the social interaction of our maturing birds.

Chickens have a very well defined hierarchy. The term pecking order is well illustrated as they interact with each other. We had purchased 25 pullets back in April. The pullets are all growing into good looking hens by this time. Well almost all of them anyway. We did lose five of them to various natural and unnatural causes, and one of these "hens" has actually turned out to be a rooster, who we decided to name "Himer" Once Himer started crowing he became king of the roost, and made sure all the other chickens stayed in line.

Then along came Henry. Henry belonged to a friend in town who had to find a country home for him when he started bothering the neighbors with his crowing. Henry was a little older and bigger than Himer, so we figured there would be a bit of a shake up in the social order of things when the two met for the first time. There was, and very shortly after Henry was the new king. Long live King Henry!

So the chickens, while a bit independent in their free ranging ways, live under a strict leadership with Henry as numero uno and Himer as his self proclaimed deputy. The hens seem to have accepted this arrangement and are even following their leaders and developing the pecking order even further within their own members. While the strict form of leadership seems a bit painful at times, Henry does take his job as chief protector of the flock very seriously and keeps a sharp eye on any chickens that wander off as he keeps another eye out for any predators. From our observations it seems the chickens are well organized in their social structure and functioning as a community.

The ducks on the other hand have a completely different social structure. They move en-mass, and if any duck gets separated from the larger body they do everything they can to get back together. There is no obvious leadership, yet there seems to be pretty much total consensus in their movements around the yard. I hesitate to suggest that they practice a form of team leadership, but it certainly looks that way! They are still a bit young though, so we will see how things emerge as they mature.

I probably need to do more research on poultry leadership styles (meaning I still need to see how our guineas behave and I probably need to get some geese and turkeys to augment the research!) At this point though I am struck by how very different forms of leadership are being displayed by our flocks. It makes me think about how we as people can learn from our God's creation of nature and animals, even in regards to our forms of social and organizational interaction.

What lessons do we need to learn about our own leadership styles and the way we interact with those around us?