Pecking Order

Chickens have a well defined hierarchy to determine who's the boss. The pecking order is normally established a few days after hatching. Although when you introduce a new bird to the flock, the pecking order has to be re-establish, this consists of a sharp peck to the back of the neck. The pecking order is natural behaviour and can sometimes get nasty, but you should not interfere unless one chicken is being denied food and or water. The pecking order should get re-establish very quickly.

The video below is a clip from a BBC documentary showing the pecking order.

This video was posted by the poultrykeeper.com