Click with Your Chick E-Book

Giene Keyes

• Herausgeber: CompanionHouse Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 204

Beschreibung

Chickens Are Smarter Than You Think Your chicken can do anything a dog can do if you train it right! Hens and roosters can be ordered go to the coop, perch on your arm, come when called, and generally respond and behave as you wish. This book presents an effective training program to get domesticated chickens to follow a variety of commands. Animal behavior specialist Giene Keyes shows how to use the positive reinforcement of clicker training to effectively manage your flock. Giene explains how a chicken thinks and socializes, expanding the range of what you may know about communicating with animals. Dog owners especially will find that working with chickens helps sharpen observation and timing skills that keep your animal engaged. Training chickens is fun too! Amaze your friends as your birds perform tricks like circling a cone, turning around, sitting down, and recognizing colors and patterns. Inside Click with Your Chick · Understand and connect with your chickens to effectively manage your flock · Clicker-train your chickens to follow fun and practical commands · Discover how a chicken thinks and socializes, and how to make that knowledge work in your favor · Learn how to use operant conditioning, luring, and positive training methods on hens and roosters · Gain insight for training any animal by improving observation skills and timing

Leseprobe

CLICK WITH YOUR CHICK

CompanionHouse Books™ is an imprint of Fox Chapel Publishing.

Project Team

Editor: Amy Deputato

Copy Editor: Jeremy Hauck

Design: Mary Ann Kahn

Index: Elizabeth Walker

Copyright © 2019 by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Fox Chapel Publishing, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

eBook ISBN 978-1-62008-345-1

Print ISBN 978-1-62008-344-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Keyes, Giene, author.

Title: Click with your chick : a complete chicken training course using the

clicker / Giene Keyes.

Description: Mount Joy, PA : Fox Chapel Publishing, [2019] | Includes index.

| Identifiers: LCCN 2019018173 (print) | LCCN 2019020457 (ebook) | ISBN

9781620083451 () | ISBN 9781620083444 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Chickens--Training. | Clicker training (Animal training)

Classification: LCC SF487 (ebook) | LCC SF487 .K5615 2019 (print) | DDC

636.5/1--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018173

This book has been published with the intent to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter within. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the author and publisher expressly disclaim any responsibility for any errors, omissions, or adverse effects arising from the use or application of the information contained herein. The techniques and suggestions are used at the reader’s discretion and are not to be considered a substitute for veterinary care. If you suspect a medical problem, consult your veterinarian.

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We are always looking for talented authors. To submit an idea, please send a brief inquiry to [email protected]

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: How Chickens Learn

Chapter 2: Understanding Your Chicken

Chapter 3: Bonding with Your Bird

Chapter 4: The Clicker

Chapter 5: Preparing Your Chicken for Training

Chapter 6: Chicken Tricks

Chapter 7: Chickens, the Environment, and Other Animals

Chapter 8: Let’s Talk about Roosters

Chapter 9: Chicken Enrichment

Appendix: Chicken Rescue

About the Author

Photo Credits

Acknowledgments

There are many people I’d like to acknowledge for their contributions to my work on this book, for their support in building my confidence to write it, and for their insights on chickens.

I would like to thank Heather Lockhart for her chicken expertise. Heather may not admit it, but she pretty much knows just about everything there is to know about chickens. She’s my go-to chicken expert, and she’s always willing to answer questions and spend as much time with me as I need. She’s a pretty awesome lady.

A big thanks to Susan Troller for inviting me to do chicken-training seminars and (half-jokingly) explaining that if chickens were large enough, they’d eat us—which I truly believe! When Susan owned Cluck the Chicken Store, she invited me to to show off how clever chickens can be and to recruit as many people to fall in love with chickens as I could.

Thank you to my dear friend Stephanie for her love of anything with feathers, fur, toes, and snouts. The passion in her voice when she talks about the animals she loves is enough to convince anyone to love them just as much.

I’d like to send an enormous thank you to all of the sanctuaries and rescues that are trying to educate the public and spread the word about the plight of the poor chicken, a magnificent and intelligent creature worthy of respect and consideration.

I’d especially like to thank my husband and my kids. My husband let me get my first chicken, and my second, and my fortieth. He lets me do crazy things like go to poultry swaps (and then forbids me from ever going again when he sees what I come home with). He lets me keep a chicken in the house because he knows it makes me happy. Actually, he doesn’t “let” me, he supports me. And my three kids, who probably roll their eyes whenever they hear me go on a twenty-minute-long speech when someone asks, “Why would you train a chicken?” My daughter is my amazing photographer, and she is very patient with me when I want to get it “just right.” My oldest son has an aura about him that animals flock to. They all feel so comfortable around him. No matter the species, they all just seem to want to be with him, doing whatever he’s doing. And my youngest child is my little chicken whisperer, my partner in crime. I think he loves chickens more than anyone I’ve met, and he allows me to take a moment to just think of the joy that these creatures can bring.

Introduction

The idea for this book is one that has been nesting for a while. When I first got chickens, I didn’t realize that I wanted to write a book on how to train and bond with them, but I’ve enjoyed having chickens more than I could have imagined. Through the years, I’ve had chickens come, and I’ve had chickens go. I’ve lost some of my favorite chickens. Two passed suddenly, and I’ve lost some to predators. To be honest, I didn’t start training chickens because I loved them; I initially started training them because I wanted to become a better dog trainer. I truly didn’t realize how much fun I’d have training my little dinosaurs! Even more so, I had fun just simply being around my chickens, observing them, spending time with them, and getting to know them. The more people with whom I talk about chickens, the more they are interested in them, too—not just training them, but really understanding them and bonding with them.

As I progressed in my training, I started holding seminars and chicken-training workshops, and I began to realize that each one of my hens had her own little personality. Even chickens within the same breed have distinct personalities. You may think to yourself, “Duh! Of course they each have a different personality!” But to many people, it may sound odd. Many people look at a group of chickens and honestly don’t see past a group of chickens. It’s not because they don’t really care about the chickens; in fact, they may really love animals. However, I think that, as a society, we group animals together as one and don’t really consider that they are individual beings. I’ll admit that when they all look the same, it’s hard to differentiate. But once you get to know them—well, you know! They certainly are all different little creatures with their own likes and dislikes. They even form close bonds with their friends.

I got my first chickens in 2012. When I write it, it doesn’t seem like that long ago, yet it feels as if I’ve had chickens forever. I grew up in the city but have always been a country girl at heart, so maybe that’s why. Whatever the reason, I’m hooked! It seems as if more and more people I know are joining me in chicken ownership; there are backyard, urban, 4-H, and rural chicken lovers. My passion for animal behavior is what led me to chickens. I have studied dog (and human) behavior for more than twenty years. During that time, I owned a dog daycare and training company. I have trained thousands—yes, thousands!—of dogs and their people. Dog training is a pretty cool profession because there is always something new to learn.

Birdie, one of our very first chickens.

Around 2008, I heard about “chicken camps.” Bob Bailey and Terry Ryan both have held these chicken camps around the world (yes, it’s a thing). Dog trainers love to go to chicken camps because the camps improve their ability to train dogs. Chickens are crazy fast, and you have to keep their attention or else they will simply walk away (unlike a dog, over whom you have some sort of control because he is leashed). Working with chickens, you learn to improve your timing, observation skills, and much more. I had always wanted to go to a chicken camp but didn’t have the time or the resources to do so. So, a few years after we moved to the country, I decided to get a flock of my own. As a child, I was always asking my parents for this animal or that animal, and my mom told me that I could have as many animals as I wanted when I was grown up—time to get some chickens!

A couple days before Easter (cliché, I know…), I went to a friend’s house and picked out five little adorable chicks that were no larger than the palm of my hand. At the time, I had no idea how much joy these little creatures would bring me and my family. They have introduced me to a whole new world, including amazing animal behaviors, great new friends, and a renewed appreciation for an animal that is very basic yet continues to amaze me with its intelligence. In fact, my friend Susan Troller has a wonderful analogy to explain the intelligence of chickens. She says that they have little computer chips for brains, and those little chips hold millions of years of experience and information!

When I was younger, I always craved the knowledge to understand how to train animals. We had a family dog who certainly learned from her mistakes. She would get into the garbage can and then be put in the basement for a long time-out. Maybe hunting and show dogs had crates at that time, but no one knew about using them with family dogs. I would have loved to read a book on dog training or to have taken my dog to a training class, but we didn’t have anything like that around us. I remember going to the library to find books on dog training, but the only ones I could find were on how to train “bird dogs.” I wanted to know not only how to train my dog but also how to train her in a non-forceful manner.

Me with my friend Susan Troller, who once owned a chicken-supply store.

When I was nine years old, I got my first horse. I loved that horse more than life itself. I started taking riding lessons at the stable on the outskirts of town. I remember one day when my horse was acting up. The instructor got on her, beat her with the whip, and made her gallop around the ring about twenty times. She was sweaty and out of breath, and I felt like all of the blood had been drained from my body. Again, I craved the knowledge on how to train her and how to handle that situation better.

When I was twenty-five, I got my very own puppy. I was so excited to train this chubby little black Labrador that the first thing I did was sign up for puppy class. I was such a training-class geek! I had my leash, my treats, and a mile-wide smile. When I arrived at class, an instructor took off my puppy’s collar and slapped a choke chain on him. I remember feeling like that wasn’t right, but the instructors were the professionals, after all, so I did what they told me to do. Yank up for sit; yank down for down. We progressed through the levels of the classes. My dog learned, but he certainly was not an operant (see definitions starting on page 72) dog, nor was he happy to be in class.

I remember the straw that broke the camel’s back: We had gotten to the intermediate level and were starting to learn how to heel off leash. The instructor came over to me and told me to drop my leash and put my thumb and index finger on my dog’s ear. She said, “If he gets too far away from you, you pinch his ear as hard as you can.” That was it! I couldn’t do this type of training anymore. I wanted my dog to be happy and willing and to want to do things with me. I knew there must be another way. From that moment on, even though I didn’t discover clicker training until years later, I used positive-reinforcement training—with horses, pigs, cats, chickens, husbands, kids, you name it!

I do have to admit, training chickens has made me a bit humble. I can see how much of a slow human being I am sometimes. I sometimes think, ”I just missed the opportunity to reward that behavior!” But chickens are pretty forgiving. They will still learn behaviors even though you may be the one who has to catch up to them. After a while, you and your chicken will start to work together as a team, learning from one another. It’s a pretty cool thing.

Training your chicken is only partly about observing behaviors and honing in on your timing skills. The tricks are super cool. The amazement you’ll feel when your chicken “gets it” is awesome. But the truly wonderful part is that you’ll find yourself bonding with your chicken, and your chicken will be bonding with you. She’ll be engaged with you, and she’ll want to spend more time with you. My guess is that you’ll want to spend more time with her, too!

Just to warn you: this is not a book about how to keep chickens. It’s not about how to care for your chicken (other than giving her love and encouragement, which is certainly part of the book!). It’s not about how to build a coop. There are shelves full of books about chickens and how to care for them. This is a book about training your chicken and how to really connect and engage with your bird—something you’ll both find very rewarding!

I’m glad you’re here with me to learn about training your chicken. It may sound silly to some people, but once you start doing it, I think you’ll be in awe of these little creatures just as I have become.

One of the many coops my talented husband has built for our chickens.

Chapter 1: How Chickens Learn

We breed Portuguese Water Dogs. They are an amazing breed, and I always love to show them off and talk about how much we love them. But when people come to our home to meet our dogs, it’s almost inevitable that we end up in the backyard with the pigs and the chickens. A family with young children recently came to visit, so I took a bag of leftover food from the refrigerator, and we went outside to feed the pigs and the chickens. As we were feeding them, I didn’t even realize that I kept offering little bits of information about the chickens. I’d say things like, “See how the rooster is making that cute little sound? He’s actually calling the hens right now to tell them that there is yummy food over there.” The woman commented by saying, “Wow, you really know a lot about chickens!” I had to laugh at myself because I never quite realize when I have been going on and on about the chickens. I smiled and explained to her that I find them so interesting. I told her that the more time I spend with my chickens, the more I’m amazed at what cool creatures they are. There are so many amazing things to learn about chickens!

Chickens are highly intelligent, social beings. We are lucky to have so much scientific research about them at our fingertips. Think about how much we know about chickens today and how much more we will know twenty years from now. Here are some of the interesting things that science tells us about chickens.

Me with Portuguese Water Dogs Axl, Liberty, and Tallulah.

They have more than thirty different communication sounds. I recognize sounds of baby chicks calling for their mom. I also recognize sounds of a hen announcing to the world that she is about to lay an egg. There are sounds for mothers calling for chicks, and sounds for roosters crowing (morning, noon, and night!). I hear chickens making cooing sounds to each other when they’re standing around or calling to each other when they have found yummy treats on the ground. I hear sounds of boredom and sounds of excitement. I have heard my rooster call to the girls to try to get their attention (while the girls completely ignore him). I’ve also heard him yell at them that a hawk is overhead and then watch them all scurry into the barn. I’ve heard my chickens communicate when it’s evening and time to perch. Gosh, I can think of around fifteen different sounds just from general observation!

Some of our flock with our pigs, munching on a seed block together.

They have a social hierarchy. It’s basically a means of keeping order in the flock. Usually, there is an alpha hen and an alpha rooster. Right now, I have two roosters (father and son, and sometimes they act like it!). I have to admit, my alpha rooster seems pretty tolerant. He has never beaten up on any of the hens, and his son seems to pretty much ignore him. Every once in a while, the alpha will walk over to his son and just give him a reminder of who’s boss with a fairly gentle peck on the head (hence the phrase “pecking order”). I also have my little bantam house-chicken, Sprinkles, indoors with me. She must be (or must want to be) an alpha hen because she has taken on the responsibility of crowing! I’m not sure if I should call her a “hooster” or a “rhen.”

Sometimes I’ll pluck a chicken from the barn to bring her in the house with me for training. Knowing that chickens have a social hierarchy, the pecking order changes with one of them gone, and it then has to be established again when the chicken returns. If the chicken that leaves the group is the alpha chicken, the second in line has to be ready physically and mentally to take on that role.

Chickens are said to have emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage one’s emotions as well as the emotions of others. The three components of emotional intelligence are emotional awareness; the ability to harness emotions and apply them to tasks, such as thinking and problem solving; and the ability to manage emotions, including regulating one’s own emotions and cheering up or calming down others.

The one and only Sprinkles!

It sounds a bit profound, doesn’t it? Emotional intelligence in a chicken? Trying to explain this to non-chicken people might take a little convincing, but I can tell you that I’ve seen emotional intelligence in chickens firsthand, probably on a daily basis. Running for cover when your friend tells you that a predator is coming? I’d say that’s a situation in which you’d be emotional and have to think rationally. Finding a delicious bug, becoming excited, and calling your girlfriend over so she can have it instead of you? Could that be categorized as cheering someone up? Well, I do know that my chickens cheer me up all the time. And then, with certain other emotions, I think my chickens are more like “whatever.”

Baby Checkers, vying to be “top hen.”

Chickens have problem-solving skills. If you think of the high intelligence level of birds in general, their problem-solving skills should not surprise you. A magpie can recognize its image in a mirror. African grey parrots can count, categorize objects by color and shape, and learn to understand human words (not just repeat them, but actually understand them). There are cute videos of cockatoos dancing and keeping the beat to music. Crows and ravens are clever problem-solvers and expert toolmakers. The same is true for chickens, and they demonstrate these skills in their daily activities, such as figuring out the pecking order and how to live peacefully among a flock.

Here’s an example of problem solving: I used to have a chicken that would peck at my feet so I would feed her. I would go into the barn, she’d run over and peck at my feet, and I would, in turn, pour food in her bowl. This was her little routine, and she was pretty proud of the fact that she knew how to make me do something. Well, summer came, and I started wearing flip-flops into the barn. A chicken’s pecks can be hard on bare toes, so I decided that I didn’t want her to do that behavior anymore. If I would have reacted in any way to her pecking at my feet (shooing her away, walking around, or something similar), she would have continued to peck at my feet because she would be getting at least some type of response. So, for a few days, each time I went into the barn, I just stood there. The first day, she pecked at my feet for about ten minutes. She became very frustrated and even tried scratching at my feet. When she decided to stop pecking at my feet and just stood near me, I walked to her food container and fed her. The second day was the same story, but it only took about a minute for her to stop pecking at my feet. By the third day, she was no longer pecking at my feet. She had figured out what to do to get her food.

So, if birds in general are smart enough to understand humans, make tools, and keep a beat, then why do most people think of chickens as “bird brains?” I guess chickens are just egg-laying robots that don’t have feelings or the brain capacity to think past laying and pecking, right? It might just be a lack of education. Looking at a group of animals all together, it can be hard for some people to really understand that each one of the animals in that herd, pack, or flock has its own personality, feelings, emotions, and friendships. Likewise, considering a group of chickens, all the same size and color, in a barn, I can see how it may be hard for some people to realize the birds’ intelligence and individuality. I’m sure most people’s first thought isn’t, “Wow, those birds seem really smart!”

Each chicken in the flock has his or her own personality, likes and dislikes, and feelings.

One of the most difficult and rewarding jobs I’ve had is when I owned a dog daycare. Part of the reason it was difficult is because when I started it in 2004, most people didn’t know what a dog daycare was or why you’d want to take your dog there. One of my marketing strategies was to let my friends and their friends bring their dogs to daycare for free for the first two months. Because not many people in town knew about dog daycare, my “master plan” was to have potential clients enter an active building and see dogs running around, playing, and having a blast! My friends who brought their dogs enjoyed it so much (or, should I say, the dogs enjoyed it so much) that after the first couple of months for free, they became paying clients.

I mention my dog daycare because there would be times when we would have maybe twenty black Labradors or fifteen Golden Retrievers, all in the same room. Our daycare was set up so that owners and potential clients could walk into the room and be able to see all of the dogs interacting. I can’t tell you how many times people would ask, “How do you tell all of the dogs apart?” We’d respond with what any parent or babysitter would say: “When you get to know their personalities, you can see the differences in them quite easily.” It’s not always just a matter of one having a longer snout or one having a curlier tail. It’s really their personalities that set them apart from each other.

Did You Know?

Recent science tells us that chickens possess communication skills equal to those of some primates and that they use complex communication to convey their intentions. Like they say at Edgar’s Mission, an animal sanctuary in Australia, “If someone calls you ‘bird brain,’ say thank you. It might be the best compliment you’ve ever received.”

I’m certain that chickens develop lifelong friendships, just as humans, dogs, elephants, and many other species do. Geese mate for life. Elephants have been observed remembering friends they hadn’t seen in more than thirty years. It’s said that barn owls form emotional connections to their partners, and they even cuddle just to cuddle (not only as a breeding activity).