I supervise a turkey breeding facility. I have a small flock at present, only around 5000 birds. Anyway, daily I have to go through all the birds that have been sitting in the nests for more than 6 hours. If they don't have an egg in them, I pull them out of the nest and place them in the center aisle. Once I've gone through the 400 foot long row of nests, I then need to chase those birds to holding pens in the back of the barn. Now the aisle I chase them down is about 3 feet wide and again 400 ft long. Most birds chase very well, but once in a while you have some hens facing towards the onrushing crowd and they don't move. When the crowd hits those standing birds a big pile up ensues with hens panicking to get past and get away from me. The standing hens have no where to go but turn around and go with the crowd. The nests on either side of the aisle are steel and 3 feet high, so they have no where to go but right down the aisle. Some birds are faster than others and that causes a pile-up. Once in a while one of the birds I pulled is injured and that causes a pile-up.
This whole thing reminded me of Agincourt. (Yes, my mind works in strange ways). The battle ground was fairly narrow as it was basically an open field surrounded by forest, so the huge French force was funnelled into a small area. Once the 1st wave was repelled, they turned and retreated right through the 2nd wave. In such a conjested area, many would be forced to retreat because that was the only way possible for them to go, just like the turkey's in the aisle. Imagine that the birds I'm chasing are the advancing French and those handful of hens that are injured or just standing there are the retreating French. Just a couple turkeys can slow the advance of 100's of birds and throw everything into confusion.
So, today at work I got a few hundred white turkeys to re-enact the Battle of Agincourt for me and I got a real sense of how a large host can be defeated if not well orginized. Next I'll work on banners for them. It will be pretty hard for them to carry any weapons in their wings but maybe if I paint one of the wing feathers silver it will look like a sword
Jeff 