Yesterday Pepper appeared to have hiccups for a while. As I have never heard of this before, I researched on the internet and chicken forums and found that other chicken keepers had experienced this too.<\/p>\n
They described exactly what Pepper was doing, it looked like a sneeze but sounded like a hiccup. It didn’t seem to distress the hen and she returned to normal after a short period of time.<\/p>\n
I then found a video clip of a hen with hiccups and it was exactly what Pepper was doing yesterday. I was reassured that I was not alone and they said it was harmless.<\/p>\n
Hiccups are a spasm of the diaphragm and birds don’t have a diaphragm, so technically you could say they can’t hiccup. Birds have an air sac which draws air in like bellows in a blacksmiths fire pit. Birds can get spasms of their air sac from time to time so this could be classed as hiccups.<\/p>\n
Either way I know \u00a0that what I saw Pepper doing yesterday, looked like hiccups and the video shows another hen doing the same thing so I therefore conclude that chickens can get hiccups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday Pepper appeared to have hiccups for a while. As I have never heard of this before, I researched on the internet and chicken forums and found that other chicken keepers had experienced this too. They described exactly what Pepper … Continue reading