007 - House Training Your Chooks

This is probably the most common inquiry I receive second to "Is that really a chicken?" I often hear people ask, "What do you do when they poop?" or just about any variation of "poop" thereof. For this reason, the command phrase for my chickens could not be any variation of the word, but instead I chose the phrase, "Go pooters". I am now at the point that I can take my eldest - about a year and a half - to a friend's house, spend the night, and feel comfortable with him in his kennel and even out on the couch with me so long as I take him out every few hours, find him a patch of grass or dirt, and tell him, "Go pooters, Bo. Go pooters."

But let's back up. Lots of people don't even believe that chickens even have bowel control, let alone the ability to be house trained! However, I've heard of many chickens, while indoors, only using toilets, news papers, old tin pie pans, trash cans, and many other "designated" areas. The use of a designated area indicates bowel control. Also an indicator of bowel control is that both chicks ( of both sexes ) and broody hens have the instinct NOT to "go" in the nest. Broody hens tend to hold their bowels except for ONE venture off the nest A DAY. Chicks, on the other hand, tend to at least try to hold themselves during the night, and usually do a pretty good job of it.

When I didn't used to use the heat-pad method for raising chicks, I used a heat lamp, like most other people. The downside of using a heat lamp is that the chicks NEVER have a sense of night time, and when they don't have that definite night time, they become VERY cranky. Combine this with the fact that I raise chicks in my room with me, and guess who's not getting any sleep! As in... less than usual! So to combat that, my chicks went out with me during the day. I wrapped my large scarf around my neck, which bundled the chicks like a hammock, and occasionally let them in my hood. While in my scarf or my hood, they are exposed to a dark environment that is warm and snug, very similar to being sat on by Mum. They would snuggle right up against my neck and sleep all day. I made certain to every hour or so dump them from my scarf and let them stretch their legs a little. I observed VERY quickly that almost immediately upon being expulsed from the scarf, they relieved themselves with some VERY large stools! This is the chick's natural instinct not to soil the nest kicking in.

I never discipline my chickens for defecating. I never shout at them, hit them, or otherwise discourage them. I take every single opportunity to let the command phrase "go pooters" sink in. Each and every time they defecate, I say, "Go pooters!" and give them lots of praise. This has established itself so that when I give the command out of context ( when they have NOT just defecated ), they have begun to experiment to see just what it means and how to get praise from it. They KNOW I am asking them to do something, but only occasionally will the eldest even catch on. When I use the command phrase out of context, my chickens become excited and begin to experiment with their actions to receive praise from me, because I will not give them praise just because I used the phrase. They will turn around and look at me. They will bob their heads and look at me. They will squat... and look at me. If they don't defecate immediately, I try the command again, then just wait for them to defecate and use the phrase. The constant looking at me is a great sign that they are checking in with me, to see just what they're doing that I agree with.

You can also help this process by timing between your chicken's average defecation ( for chicks, this is about every fifteen minutes - I am not sure about adults ), and then using that timing to time your responses, but more importantly you can use this to take your chicken to a designated litter area, give the command, have them defecate, and then praise them for defecating in a specific area. Now, once again let's look at the fact that chickens are very, very much creatures of habit, and working off of that we can create a habit of a designated litter area. This means that given time and lots of repetition, the chicken will begin to integrate that specific area into their daily routine. I know that my big rooster can safely hold his bowels for up to five hours - most animals have an eight hour limit. With my big rooster, he can sit in my lap, or even snuggle up with me and sleep at night, and even be carried around in his satchel for hours on end without making a mess. This tells me that with time and training, chickens DO have bowel control, and the ability to learn commands and patterns associated with house training.

Looking at what we've discussed above, that chickens have an instinct not to go in the nest, thus granting them bowel control; that chickens are dire creatures of habit; that chickens are very smart and inquisitive animals ( smart enough to EXPERIMENT with behaviour ), and thus trainable... we will conclude that it is entirely possible to house train your chicken. Let's also consider hat bowel control and pattern creation ( or "habits" ) are the two key elements to house training - the command phrase is just a plus if you ever have to redirect your bird's habits, or give them an occasional different place to go ( such as if they usually go in a litter box, but you decide to redirect them to go in the grass one day ).

Please make note to NEVER actually put litter in a litter box if that's what you choose to use, because the chickens WILL try to eat it! They will see it as the "grit" and little rocks that they eat to help their crop break down and digest food stuffs. Please also use your command phrases responsibly. With that, have fun allowing your chickens to meander your home freely without the need of a diaper or following them around with a roll of toilet paper!

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to Email me or leave a comment here on the blog. Please use my Email for more dire circumstances, or if you need a reply right away.

006 - How to Deal With Skittish Chickens

I have had several people Email me recently with inquiries on how to approach their skittish chickens, so I figured my next post should focus on that! That means today we're going to focus on how to catch that one hen that hides under the coop and cries when you try to catch her, or the rooster who screams, flails, and cowers in a corner when you try to pick him up. Let's even talk about the chickens who will eat from your hand, but high-tail it out of there if you so much as raise your free hand to pet them.

Let us first look back on some thoughts previously encountered in this blog. Firstly, that an animal feels safest and most comfortable when in a submissive position built on trust. That means that you, the owner of your flock and dominant being of the flock, have taken the time to convey to your animals that none of them have any reason to want to take control of any situation and that, in fact, you can and will handle it. This helps relieve much of the stress the animal feels in a dominant role when it comes to trying to supervise and micromanage everything going on around it. All of that constant vigilance will only lead to stress, distrust, and ultimately aggression. When someone else is taking care of that, the animal can let go of needing to take care of every situation, feeling calm and safe in a lower position. Remember, humans have created an idea that dominance is power and that power is desirable - this is a human concept, and animals perceive their positions in social orders very differently.

Building off of that idea, let's say that any animal who is skittish is living in fear. No one wants to live in fear - this is a horrible state of living, and it, too, can lead to aggression. Fear-based aggression. Where the other type of aggression manifests as a need to keep one's social group safe because the individual feels that no one else is doing a good enough job on that front, this type of aggression manifests as a need to keep one's self safe because they do not feel that the environment in which they exist is safe enough to let their guard down. Once you take hold of your position of dominant flock member, you should be able to eliminate fearful and dominant behaviour in your chickens, essentially eliminating fear and aggression.

So now that know the importance of how to convey dominance, and you've learned in previous posts how to be dominant... how do you build trust? Trust is built by a series of positive events... but not random positive events. The positive events must always be associated with something specific - in this case, good behaviour. Never give your chicken a treat "just because". Always ask for something. You can ask for your chicken to come to you, for them to jump, for them to follow your hand, or to peck at a certain trigger ( such as target training with dogs, many people use post-it notes or stickers ), or in the case of this post, why not use treats and praise for being pet or tolerating being picked up?

If a treat should be given upon the basis of a desirable behaviour, let us now ask ourselves...what is a treat? A treat is anything that can be associated with a positive emotion - a release of feel-good chemicals. For many animals, physical contact releases these feel-good chemicals. Without spoken language, there is no other way to truly communicate with another sentient being, so physical contact says everything a complex being needs to say in the whole spectrum of positive to negative feelings. For this reason, I often times use petting and scratching instead of edible treats for my chickens - that and it is much, much cheaper. Another way a chicken conveys positivity to another chicken is by making a long sometimes very high-pitched, sometimes very low-pitched coo. So when I say, "Oooooooh~, who's a gooooood booooy?" I am mimicking that safety sound and reinforcing a positive association with myself. Sometimes, if my chickens have been particularly good, I will take them out and give them whole body massages. I push my fingertips deep into their muscles and rub all over - up and down, around in circles, in and out... I rub their heads, their necks, backs, tails, thighs, knees, legs, wings... especially in areas with joints and where lots of movement takes place, and especially on large muscles where tension can build up. Lastly, many people will swear by food products. Many animals, and many people, are very food driven, and animals have a good reason to be food driven - it's in their instincts much more than it's in ours. However, food treats can lead to obesity and other health problems if overused, but ALL treats can lead to unwanted behaviours if not used correctly, too.

With your chickens, it is okay to make a big deal out of good behaviour. Conversely, you should never, ever make a big deal out of bad behaviour. Discipline for the bad behaviour, but be quiet, calm, and quick while doing it. Never put emotion behind your discipline, or you will begin to slip into the territory of punishment instead. As a reminder: Discipline is something your animal can understand ( speaking in their language such as pecking ) whereas punishment is actions that they do not understand ( such as hitting or shouting ). Even if your chicken just pooped on your favourite dress shirt, your wife's wedding dress from fifty years ago, if he accidentally knocked a precious china off the table, or even if he attacked you for coming into the coop - NEVER shout at him, and NEVER hit him. I will use a loud, firm, "HEY!!" when I'm not happy with a chicken's behaviour, but that is a single noise used as an alert to get attention. All chickens know what a quick, loud sound means - that means look at it to observe it any make sense of it. However, if you continue shouting, it will only frighten the animal and confuse it. When I shout "HEY!!" I make certain to come over there and correct the behaviour right away, but that sound is a way of indicating that something happened right then as opposed to the little while later when I actually reach them - in other words, it's an alert used to reinforce immediate feedback.

On the flip side, when you coo to your animal, pet it, and cuddle it when it shows a negative emotion ( fear, stress, anger... ) you are reinforcing it to feel that way. You are praising the animal for being stressed, thus encouraging it to continue being that way. When you say, "Oh you poor thing," or, "I'm so sorry," the animal has no idea what you're saying. All they really know is that while they're upset, their person is being nice. Consider that chickens catch on to patterns very quickly, and we can clearly see how easy it is for them to correlate negative behaviours - especially skittishness - with our own desire to be comforting and reassuring in the only way we know how - the human way, which is not the way that our animals know.

On that note, it is also a bad idea to put too much emotion into correcting a nervous-based negative behaviour. NEVER coo over your chicken and say, "Oh you poor thing! Are you alright??" while snuggling and petting it. This gives positive reinforcement to be afraid of a situation. When I accidentally bit my rooster's comb ( I fell backwards while holding him, and he threw his head back, sticking his comb into my mouth right when I bit down ), I felt AWFUL about it - he has two huge, deep scars on either side of his comb to this day - but I did NOT fuss over him. I checked the wounds to assess them, then I quickly cleaned them and patched them up. I was quiet and calm the whole time, and he let me handle him just fine, even while I was holding big wads of toilet paper onto his comb in order to stop the bleeding. THEN I told him I was sorry about what I did, petted him, and gave him a big hug - because he had been such a good boy, putting up with me even after I hurt him like I had. To this day he has no lasting psychological damage from me biting his comb - he even lets me nibble at his little spikes without fear of them being chopped off despite my track record!

When dealing with chickens, especially roosters, many people will choose that trust is impossible so fear is the way to go. They also choose to believe that a rooster that is submissive to you will not protect his hens. Neither of these statements are true. Some people also say that allowing a rooster to mate will up his aggression! The truth of the matter is that when an animal still has its testes, the testosterone in the body will either manifest as a sexual drive or a fight drive. Even in real, wild flocks of jungle fowl the lesser males will sometimes mate with females without upsetting the order of things - after all, the dominant male can't service all of the hens in sometimes gigantic flocks. You can ALWAYS teach your rooster that you are not a threat to his flock and to respect you without forcing him to fear you, which means nobody gets spurred and your chickens aren't stressed with you around. Even if your solution is to eat the offending animal, a stressed chicken is not as good for us because of the stress chemicals in the meat and it doesn't taste as good.

Many people will suggest kicking your rooster if he is aggressive, but this is a very, very bad thing to do. He doesn't understand what a kick is, and since it is physically painful and very frightening, he will perceive it as a threat. He may leave you alone after that, but that is ONLY because he is more interested in trying to find a way to get near enough to attack again without being punted across the yard than any real respect. In fact, he does NOT respect you or see you as "alpha" when you hurt him - he sees you as a THREAT that he doesn't know how to deal with. This seems very illogical to me since most people who have roosters have them to protect their hens, and then they become angry when the rooster attacks them despite the fact that due to previous encounters, they have clearly labelled themselves as a threat to the rooster's hens! Needless to say, violence begets more violence.

Speaking of roosters, most of the Emails I have received have focused on skittish roosters, and at least one Email stated that their rooster became skittish "once hormones came in". Skittishness is just the opposite end of the bad behaviour spectrum as aggression - and as stated above, it can even lead to aggression, even so far as the rooster that attacks people on sight! More often than not, the rooster that attacks on sight is a very fearful rooster, indeed. But let's talk hormones. Your rooster's testes are located in the middle of his back under his rib cage. Due to this neutering him ( or "caponizing" as it's called in the chicken world ) is VERY dangerous since it's an internal surgery on a small animal - and a bird, no less. There is only about a 25% survival rate for capons ( roosters that have been neutered ) due to how little it is practised in this time and area. This means that unlike dogs, cats, and other animals with external sexual organs, neutering is not an option. Now, when we neuter our dogs, we do it to make them MORE controllable... which means, they were controllable to begin with, just not as much as they would be without their sexual drives. What this means to the chicken owner is that even if your chicken has a sexual drive, it is NOT impossible to modify behaviour, even with hormones in the body. Each and every time you find yourself frustrated with your animal, before blaming the hormones, or the animal's mental capabilities, take a step back, a deep breath, and remind yourself, "This is NOT impossible! This is going to take a whole lot of dedication, continuity, and patience on my behalf, but I LOVE my animals and that's okay! It is possible to help my animals even if difficult!"

Techniques

Here's the part you all came for, right? Well, first let's look at what's really needed in your techniques. The common factor in skittish birds is humans. Each and every one of these chickens is skittish around humans. Whenever their human approaches, touches, holds, or even speaks to them, they run, flail, scream, jump, fly, dig, or otherwise try to escape. So clearly the solution to these birds being afraid of humans is to add more humans into their lives! We want to desensitise these birds to humans, while training them that humans are good. This means associating positive experiences with humans, and encouraging the release of feel-good chemicals in association with human interaction. You cannot FORCE an animal to feel good, so this is going to be ALL about patience and perseverance - and remember that you are solely responsible for your animal's ability to feel good from their environment to the food they eat to they way they perceive you.

First we have to catch the birds, though. I have heard a net on a stick like you buy for fishing works great, and I personally have used the stick-string-box method where you have a box held up by a stick with a string on it, and when the bird walks under the box you pull the stick out and the box traps the bird. I only used this method as a child on the songbirds in the backyard, but if it worked with them I don't see why it wouldn't work with a chicken. Alternatively, put something the chicken likes in a kennel, and when they walk into the kennel to check it out, snap the door shut. You can even tie a string to the door to close it from afar! Those are a few immediate methods to capturing your chicken, but slower, trust-building methods can be used, too, such as just going out and hanging out with your chickens every day to get them used to your presence. Walk around with them, follow them, do some gardening with them around to build up trust from afar.

So now that we've talked concept and catching, let's look at some different methods on working with shy birds, and hopefully one - or a combination of methods will work for you.

Human Overload

The common factor amongst skittish chickens is one thing: Humans. This clearly means the animal needs to be exposed to lots and lots of humans without anything bad happening. Like dogs, you can help your chickens calm down by touching them in certain ways that help the muscles to relax. With my rooster, his "calm button" is for me to hold him with my hands around his wings and chest, and his feet just barely touching the ground. He stands straight-legged for a few seconds, and quickly I can feel his entire body relax, and if I kept hold of him he would slowly lower right into a sitting position for me. He also relaxes if I slowly but firmly take two fingers on either side of his back and trace from under his arms down to his tail. My little rooster calms down if I scratch him on the underside of his wings. Almost all chickens will not like having their back touched at first, but once they get used to it almost all chickens will calm down when their hind end just above their tail is massaged. One rooster that I rehomed awhile ago really, really loved having the bottom of his feet massaged. Chickens respond really well to physical contact when that physical contact is coming from a calm source.

One way I would suggest exposing your shy chicken to lots and lots of people is to get a large dog crate - one that is wired on all sides, so your chicken can see what is going on around it at all times - with a kennel in the middle so your chicken has a place to feel safe, and place the crate in a main thoroughfare such as a living room or by the front door. It water bowls become an issue ( and the will because your chicken will want to stand on them ), either train them not to stand on dishes, or use a water bottle such as the ones used for guinea pigs. Provide your chicken with only a small amount of water in bowl form when introducing it to the bottle, and twice a day ( morning and night ) take your chicken and gently shove their beak into the spout of the bottle until they get some water in their mouth. You can even do this repeatedly every few minutes, or every few hours if you have the time and energy. Every single one of my chickens caught onto the water bottle in no more than three days - and after my first set learned, it seldom took more than an hour for a chicken to observe the others using the water bottle and figure it out. Now, it HAS taken about a year for my chickens to learn a method of using the water bottle that does NOT include biting the spout, shaking it, and splashing water everywhere... but it's still MUCH less mess than a bowl being flipped every few minutes.

Each time you pass the cage, maybe say your chicken's name, elsewise just be quiet and calm. When the chicken is still nervous and not sure what to make of the situation, do not touch the cage, talk to the chicken, or even look at it - you do not want to associate yourself engaging with your animal with fear and discomfort. Your chicken is going to look up to you as a role model, and if you have another member of the flock who is nice and docile around people, maybe room your skittish chicken with them so that they have another role model to work off of. When your skittish chicken sees that they're getting along just fine - and maybe even getting treats for being so calm - he'll start to behave that way, too.

Another good reason to have your skittish chicken roomed with someone else is because when you go to integrate them back into the flock, they have someone who can, in a sense, vouch for them. Always take one of your calmer members of the flock and place them in with the chickens that are going to be introduced for a couple of hours ( or until you feel the ambassador chicken is content with its guests, and everyone is calm and trusting around each other ) before introducing new chickens to a flock. With the ambassador chicken, the new chickens have a right of passage from an existing member who is able to say to the others, "No guys, really, they're cool. They're with me." It might not eliminate fighting and establishing a pecking order ( which does not need to be made or maintained by the chickens - check out previous posts about how to make your own pecking order based on good behaviour ), but it will definitely ease the transition. You can even try little by little adding one chicken in at a time of the existing flock, until you have a good five or six who are interacting well with the newcomer, and then add all of them into the larger flock at once.

In theory, the massive exposure to humans in this new setting should desensitize your chicken to the presence of humans. The next step is to reach into the crate and pick up your skittish chicken, therefore desensitizing him to physical contact as well. If he's still skittish of physical contact, read on for ways to slowly introduce physical contact as a good thing...

Controlled Feeding

This method works because you are asking the chicken to eat from something you are holding WHILE touching the bird, getting across that food comes from YOU and not the ground, feeders, jars, or what-have-you. Respect shall be given unto the food giver... if they understand that the food comes from you!

Basically, what I do in this method is I get a jar and fill it with chicken food. I place the chicken I want to socialise into isolation, and reach in past the chicken to fill up a food bowl. Since the isolation chamber is so small ( I did this particular method with a very skinny, bullied bird that was isolated for only about two weeks, so I wanted a small holding area so that it could build up weight without overexerting itself ), the chicken is forced to put up with you mussing about its enclosure. Once the chicken figured out that food came from the jar to the bowl in the back, she was soon at the front of the cage when it came time to feed her in the morning and evening. I would only give her enough food that it would have JUST run out by the time I came to fill it up - to give them any more would take away their motivation to come forward to the proffered food - or at least, it would take longer. Once she came to the front, I would hold the jar there for her so she could eat out of it, but only while I was holding it. After she would eat from the jar for a short while, I would then pour her food into her bowl and let her be.

Once she was comfortable eating from the jar while I was holding it, I began to use my free hand to get her used to physical interaction. I started by holding my free hand open-palmed towards her next to the jar. Then I gently touched her side or her breast, and would hold my hand there until she ate some and I would empty the jar into her bowl. Alternatively, you could put your free hand on the mouth of the jar so she has to eat through your fingers, or so that she has to push up against it in order to get to the food. Then I slowly moved my fingers just a little bit on her breast when giving her the jar. Then little strokes. Then I worked my way up her head until I could have my finger on her little pea comb and she didn't mind. Then I worked my way down her back, to her tail, to her legs and fluff. As I mentioned before, most chicken's DO NO like having their backs touched until they learn to accept it as a positive experience, but once they do trust it, they really seem to enjoy it.

Ultimately, I could pick up this chicken and feed her while holding her and petting her. This method takes awhile and requires daily upkeep, but it's a sure-fire way to build trust with a shy chicken. The only thing I don't like about it is the reliance on food as a source of positivity. Your ultimate goal should be that your presence, touch, and voice are just as desirable praise as food, if not more so. In that, it would seem that food is only a tool - and a crutch at that... but still, a good way to bridge the gap of trust when you don't yet have that solid of a relationship with your birds.

Watch Movies

This method is sort of like the human exposure method, except with this method you don't have to house your chicken indoors - he can still live outdoors, but gets the indoor human exposure at the same time. This one is a little different, however, in that you'll begin your tolerance training with a direct confrontation, forcing your chicken to be in a calm state of mind immediately as opposed to working into it. Another thing to consider is that chickens process what they see very similarly to us, which means unlike many other animals, they can actually view a television or computer screen and see it about the same way that we do. It has even been proven that chickens can learn by observing the actions of another chicken on a television screen.

With this method you start at night when your chicken that needs social work is in the coop, roosting for the night. Go out and grab this chicken by slipping one hand under their belly, and sliding their legs between your fingers. Make sure you grip near the body so that you're not putting undue stress on the tarsus [hock]. With your other hand on his back, holding firmly ( perhaps even holding their wings between your fingers so they can't flap away and hurt themselves ), pull the chicken off the perch. At this point, I expect that they'll make an uproar. My solution is to flip the chicken upside-down and hold them like that until they relax. This position is naturally calming to the chicken, but be careful as it's also a very dangerous position. If held upside-down for too long ( I've mostly read about a half hour ), blood can rush to their head and kill them, their lungs can collapse, and if something happens to be in their mouth at the time, they can choke on it. Despite all of this, I have NEVER had a fatal or even casual injury or accident holding my chicken's upside-down.

When your chicken starts flailing, hold his legs firmly and using your whole hand ( unless he's a bantam ), grip the skin on the back of his neck just under his comb and pull the head down. Do not stretch his neck. This should almost immediately stop any and all flailing, and it prevents you from being bitten. If your chicken stops flailing, release his neck. If he begins to flail gain, grab his neck and hold him down again. When he's ready to stop flailing, you should feel his body relax. When this happens, flip him rightside-up. If he flails, it's back to being upside-down. Continue this until when rightside-up he is calm and not struggling. Re-situate so that you are holding onto him in a more comfortable manner - hug him, or hold him under one arm, and whenever he tries to flap or kick just restrain him until he calms down. Since chickens are good at picking up patterns, this should fairly clearly illustrate that when he is not nervous, he is not being harassed.

Take your chicken inside and set up to watch a movie. With my first human aggressive rooster ( which I rehabilitated to sleeping on the foot of my bed at night, and during the day he did a great job looking after his ladies, and was still very docile when I entered the pen ), I did all of this mentioned prior and then commenced to watch The Green Mile with him the first night. I chose a long movie just to really drill it in that this is a calm, safe environment. He sat on my lap the whole time, and any I never took my hands off him. When he tried to escape, one hand would pinch his neck and the other hand and arm would restrict his body until he calmed down again. The whole movie I pet him, too. I scratched his head, comb, and wattles, I pet his back, and placed with his wings and toes. I watched a movie with him in this manner for about five days, and then I caught him during the day and brought him in the house where I set him on the floor and walked around him. I even had the dogs walk around him, and invited them to come sniff at him. I picked him up and carried him with me while I went around the house and did some chores.

By the time my house mates chose to slaughter him, he was so docile that we grabbed him, tied his feet together and his wings to his body, tossed him up in the air a couple of times to make sure the twine held ( don't worry, it was small tosses and I made certain that I was able to catch him ), and then we hung him on a hook outside and took a knife to his throat. Not one moment was he scared, and not one moment did he make a sound of protest or fear. He was easy to catch, easy to handle, and died without the usual stress and fear building up to slaughter, meaning none of those nasty stress chemicals like adrenaline in his meat when it came time to eat. His meat was sweet and tender, and I firmly believe that to be because he was a calm and relaxed rooster.

Quick and Active

So many of us have seen those Dog Whisperer episodes where Millan walks into the house, and bam, the dog is acting totally different in a matter of minutes, right? This is sort of the equivalent to that method. This method is ONLY for those of you who have the time, energy, determination, and patience to be an active flock head and already spend a lot of time with your flock, or you're willing to make an exception for a shy chicken and spend lots of time with it in order to help it overcome is fears. The basic idea here is that you pick the bird up, hold them until they calm down, set them down, and repeat until the whole procedure can be done with a bird that's essentially a little rag doll, and this method ONLY works with lots of repetition over time - days, weeks, however long it takes to build that trust-based relationship.

To make this work you are going to need a firm hand, patience, calmness, and the ability to read when your chicken is truly calm and submissive to you. You should not speak to your chicken while they are struggling - ever. Only speak and praise when they have calmed down. When the chicken begins to flail, hold them so that they cannot do damage to yourself or themselves. I try to hold the legs and the neck on chickens I don't quite trust, and I wrap my hands around their wings and breast on chickens that I know won't bite me. Either way, when an animal is restrained they only have two options: flail or relax. Take away the option to flail, and they are forced to relax. HOWEVER, don't even use more force than necessary!! Sometimes animals will fight being restrained simply because they are being restrained too much, and as soon as you let up a little, they'll calm down. This is something I have learned working at a veterinary office, and spending a year training to become a certified veterinary assistant: "Only use as much restraint as necessary."

When you pick your chicken up, they must be absolutely calm and relaxed before you move. Then you can begin to let them down, but if they tense up again, stop your movements and just hold them there until they relax again. Soon they will learn that the more relaxed they are, the closer to the ground they get. As a modified version of this method, I pick up my tiny rooster when he's being a snot, bop him on the head, then commence to rub him against my face. I especially rub his head under my chin. It is getting across that I am boss, and there's nothing he can do about it while simultaneously encouraging calm behaviour no matter what happens to him.

Miscellaneous Tips and Ideas

You can always try to start with training chicks, but unless you know what your chicken is trying to say to you ( see my older post "What is My New Chick Trying to Say to Me?" ), it is likely that you will accidentally harbour negative behaviours. Many of these behaviours look cute when the chick is small, but manifest into larger problems as we grow. If you ever cooed around your chick when it was startled or hurt, you unintentionally encouraged it to behave that way. If your chick tried to get out of your hand once and made a fuss about it, and you let it go, you unintentionally trained your chick to WANT to get out of your hand, and if you ever pet your chicken and cooed over it while it was cowering in a corner, trying to calm it down like you would another person, you have unintentionally trained your chick that it is encouraged to be fearful of people.

However, do not fret, and do NOT hold any guilt over this! You did not know any better, and you were just trying to be a kind, sweet person. Animals see the world in the present and ONLY in the present. They have memories of traumatic events, but if you're willing to walk forward and show them that there's nothing that being calm can't fix, those memories will fade much quicker than with any human. Perhaps even in minutes! Just keep at it, keep up the good work, and even if you do screw up, make the next moment count in that you will do better and learn from it.

I would like to close by once again stressing that if your chicken is cowering from you, it does not respect you, it is not calm and in a stable sense of mind, and it is only a matter of time before it tries to aggress you again. Even hens can feel this way. Many of us have heard of "fear biting" in dogs - that's when the dog is nervous, and bites out of fear because it does not understand what is going on around it, or associates pain and fear with a situation. MOST cases of chicken biting and spurring is fear-based.

Before you get angry at your rooster and threaten to make stew, ask yourself if YOU have done anything to encourage this behaviour? Have you shouted at him, hurt him, or otherwise encouraged him to fear and be confused by you? Have you accidentally cooed at him and praised him when he was startled or upset? Are YOU upset? Remember, he's going to be reading your body language and behaviour, and he relies on you being a calm, reliable, trustworthy leader. Also remember that having a rooster that is submissive to you ( and CAN be trained to be submissive to ALL humans - children included ) does NOT mean that you'll have a rooster that won't protect his flock in your absence, and even in your absence, it's still his job to alert to danger.

Any questions, comments, concerns, or requests of a topic to be written about, please feel free to Email me or leave a comment. Please do not hesitate to Email me if your query is urgent!

I've already planned out my next post, and it's a post that MANY people have asked me about: House training. Stay tuned! I should have this one out sometime soon!

005 - Further Exploration into Crowing and How to Control it

I have recently been asked to write an article that focuses even more on how to keep a rooster from crowing. Out of everything I have trained my chickens to do, this feat seems to be the most impressive and most difficult to achieve for others. I have only spoken to one other person who has had success training roosters not to crow, and to them, it was as much common sense as it is to me, but not everyone is gifted in the ways of animal communication which is what this blog is for.

First and foremost, I can't stress enough that lack of crowing is the same reason why my chickens run to me when they sense danger, why they greet me happily every morning when I open up their curtains, why they let me pick them up and handle them in even the oddest of fashions ( I regularly carry my chickens upside-down for short distances, and toss and catch them ), and why they seek out my company whenever possible. In short, I am dominant, fair, loving, entertaining, stern, and strict, and in that my chickens know they are safe, comfortable, and happy. They know they have no reason to try and fill in gaps with their own dominance under any circumstance. I am dominant to them 100% of the time, and in exchange they are protected, fed, watered, housed, and loved.

The first thing to exercise is boundaries. It is NEVER too young to exercise boundaries - ALL boundaries. From day one, mother hen will teach her chicks what is descent behaviour and what is not, and be VERY firm and strict about it. Chicks don't get any leeway because they are young. They are taught how to eat, how to drink, and how not to die. This means from day one you should set up your boundaries for your chick - where are okay places to walk and play, and where the chicken isn't allowed; what things they can peck at and what things are not okay to peck at; what is appropriate to cry for and what is not; when and where it is okay to perform mating rituals and when and where it is not; and so on.

For example, I NEVER allow a chicken to touch my electronics, but they're welcome to wander my room otherwise. You would be surprised, I'm sure, to see just how well chickens can come to identify such things as "electronics" when appropriate boundaries are set into place. I also teach my chickens that they are allowed to peck at food, dirt, water, and even clothing and hair, but they must mind the intensity of their pecks of clothing, hair, and skin, and they are NEVER allowed to peck at eyes, moles, nose, fingers, etc. My chicks are allowed four days to cry about anything, so that I can gauge their personalities and needs, but after that they may not cry excessively when out of food or water ( this leads to crowing later on - it is okay for them to crow or cry once or twice to let me know they're out, but no more than that ), when unhappy with the way they're being handled, when unhappy with lack of your presence, etc. Last example, my eldest rooster has just begun mating my eldest hen, but sometimes he is rough with her. I have disciplined him when the hen is unwilling, not because of ethical issues pertaining to rape, because those are very human concepts, but because it leads to better socailization overall for everyone, tamer birds, a clear level of dominance on my part to dictate when mating is and is not appropriate, and it also helps teach everyone that they need to be aware of their levels of energy and be calm and controlled about what they do and how they do it. This does not mean lack of fun, it just means that instead of running wildly, knocking things over, and being a general menace, they are aware of their surroundings and respect them as well as themselves and those around them.

That being said, how do I do it? It's easy enough to note desired outcomes, and levels of general behaviour, but how do we get there? Long story short, dominance, but there's also a lot more in it than that. I'm currently working with a chick who has NOT had too much human contact growing up, and is thus not the most well-behaved chicken ever. She cries when I wave my hand over her or walk past her, then screams when I leave her alone, and is constantly "talking" when I have her with me. Her energy level is off the charts, as she goes bonkers over nearly any little thing - a change of food or water, when it's time to treat her wound, when I put her down for the night, and so forth.

First, we take into account that she's a chick, and chicks are naturally more "talkative" than adults. However, that does not condone the behaviour of being excessively talkative or whiny Thus, I started teaching her when it is and is not appropriate to whine, cry, and talk by exposing her to very small stimuli and either agreeing with gentle coos, pets, scratches, and praise, or disciplining with a stern bat on the beak or back of her head ( or feet, if I'm focusing on the lesson "don't kick, flail, and scratch" ). I start by picking her up in a way that is NOT harmful, but she might take as alarming, and let her work her crying out. Sometimes she stops right away, and if that's the case, I give her praise - lots and lots of praise, but if she continues to cry more than a few seconds, I begin batting her beak the way her mother would tell her to knock it off.

Now usually a chicken disagrees with another chicken by pecking their head, right on the top and a little to the back, but this chick has a head injury that I'm tending, so I have to modify it to her beak. An injury does not, however, mean that you should be any "gentler" except in the area of the injury itself - be creative and find another way to disagree with unwanted behaviours, but in the animal world, injured animals don't get a break and they don't UNDERSTAND breaks, either. The only exception I make is immediately after an injury during the "resting" period, I strictly interact with them only to tend the wound, and otherwise have them in a dark, isolated area where they just sleep to help hyper-accelerate the healing process.

Also note that I DO NOT condone the use of provoking an injured area to "add umph" to your disagreement - pain is NOT the goal here, merely distraction. A mother hen does NOT intentionally peck her chicks hard enough to make them cry, it's more of a gesture to say "Hey, knock it off!" When chicks DO cry from being pecked, it is seldom a cry of pain so much as a cry of discomfort - a temper tantrum, if you will.

Understanding this, that the chicks cries are temper tantrums ( you will KNOW if a chicken is in pain as opposed to throwing a tantrum - the pain cry is a much more desperate pitch, and their movements tend to be much more panicked than the "just trying to get away" flailing of a tantrum-throwing chicken ), pain is not to goal of discipline, and that discipline and disagreement is necessary, let's look at a specific situation. The chick I am training cries when I pick her up. She is not in pain nor does she feel she's in danger - she simply doesn't like it and throws a tantrum because of it. She makes an unhappy trill, flaps her wings wildly, cries and screams, and claws at my hand. First step is to grip her in a way that her claws cannot get to my hand, then I flick her feet every time she makes to try and flail them, and once she can no longer do damage to my hand, I move on to batting her beak EVERY TIME she cries or screams until she is silent. I give her a few seconds before I make to set her down - generally, she cries again and the process of batting for screams happens again. Again she's silent and I go to set her down - this usually happens a few times until she's quiet to the point that her feet hit the ground. At this point, she usually tries to stand on her tip-toes, as she is still nervous. Nervous is NOT the right response, and if she cries, I pick her up again and begin batting her beak until she calms, then I set her down and I hold her until she relaxes, then I set her down all the way and scratch her breast ( she REALLY likes having her breast scratched ), and coo at her about what a good girl she is.

The more I do this, the less she cries and struggles and starts to trust my judgement of what will and will not be scary or painful interactions. She begins to learn that by being calm when I handle her or interact with her, she will be perfectly safe and comfortable, and be well rewarded for good behaviour, thus making good behaviour worth whatever odd thing I put her through. After only two days of starting her training ( she's been under my care for only about a week, and the first several days have been strictly medical - ideally, I should have been exercising her behaviours from day one but they did not become intolerable until recently ), she has calmed considerably and no longer screams when I pick her up in an odd way. Albeit, she still does cry to some extent.

That is one very, very specific example, though. An example of how even a crippled chick can learn to behave, and if she were male, or even a female prone to crowing, these exercises would help her understand that crowing is not a behaviour that would result in what she wanted to happen. These exercises are how I have trained my two adult roosters who only crow when out of food or water, or for an extremely short period of time ( less than ten minutes for an entire day ) after I have left them alone.

However, let's look at some topics in further detail, how it works in their heads, and how it can be exercised.

DOMINANCE

I will always, always, always refer to dominance as a core issue with ANY misbehaving animal. I seldom even have to experience the situation first-hand - I'm yet to find a situation in which dominance is NOT an issue. In the animal world, the dominant animal is the one responsible for other animals happiness, safety, comfort, and general well-being. In the case with chickens, a rooster is usually dominant over a flock, and he crows to communicate with his flock. It's his job to keep everyone up-to-date about what's going on, and keep an eye on what all is going on with the flock. Roosters submissive to him are less likely to crow, but will crow to let him and others around them know what's going on in their neck of the neighbourhood. Often when one rooster crows, others will echo, as a form of long-distance conversation.

Crowing tends to happen for two reasons: dominance, and personal safety. The dominant rooster crows, and receives crows in response so that he can gain head-counts on everyone to know how his flock is doing - he is even able to discern differences in tone of crowing and whether it means "All is well", "I lost a hen", or any number of different messages. The other reason crowing tends to happen is when a submissive rooster spots some sort of danger, and needs to alert the whole flock - a crow is easily the loudest sound a chicken can produce, and therefore the fastest and most reliable form of communicating with an entire flock, possibly of hundreds of chickens. The rooster who called the danger is then responsible for giving the "all clear" and crows again when the danger is gone.

Submissive roosters can also crow if they are in need of help - I once took care of a rooster who slept in a cat carrier at the foot of my bed. He was happiest under a box inside of the carrier - the box being barely big enough to slip over him completely. One night at about three in the morning, he began crowing and crowing and crowing. I sat up to find what was the matter, and I had accidentally kicked the carrier off the bed so that he was on his side and unable to right himself. As soon as I picked the carrier up, and put it back on the foot of my bed, he was silent, and that was the only time he crowed at night after I gave him his box. His crow in that context was essentially saying, "Help me, help me, I've fallen and I can't get up!"

However, even in cases where a rooster is in need of help, it is perfectly justifiable to disagree and discipline if they crow excessively. My roosters know they are only allowed to crow once to denote an issue in their environment. Twice if I've ignored them for several minutes. I disagree by asserting my dominance to them by holding their backs down with one hand, and gently pinching the back of their neck and pushing the head down with the other hand while making certain they are facing me. Most roosters will not go for the precaution of holding the back down, as the head down is the only real necessary goal, but you do not want your chicken to panic and hurt themselves, so holding the back down merely prevents them from flailing and working up a panic. Generally, if they cannot flail after a few seconds, they calm down and submit. I do not consider their submission absolute until I can release them and they stay sitting with their head down until I give them a release command, though.

When an animal tries to dominate a situation, even if they are generally submissive, it usually means that you're handling a specific situation inadequately, and they think they can do a better job. Make sure to not ever give your animals the option of thinking this by dictating when they're let out, when they're fed and watered, when they're given affection, and so forth.

I personally find it perfectly acceptable for an animal to ask for affection, but before gaining affection, they are asked to do something. When my eldest hen and rooster were making a fuss one day, a couple weeks after school started and I had ignored them, I knew they were complaining that I had not taken them out and played with them recently. However, instead of taking them out and playing with them right away, I asked them to sit, stay, and then released them to stand up. I picked them up, one at a time, and tossed them up and down, and worked on their landing on my arm, and several other exercises. After about an hour of working them, we went for a bike ride out to a park where they were allowed to play in the park for several hours until the sun set.

That is a way of allowing your animals to still communicate to you their wants and needs, but not letting them dictate when they get exactly what they want. They looked up to me, and asked for attention. They knew they would work before receiving their affection, and enjoy their work because of it, but never did they TELL me what to do or dictate the situation even if they did get what they wanted in the end.

Nothing says that you can NOT give your animals affection when they ask, but you DO have to be very strict about the conditions of what THEY have to do in order to receive your affection. Otherwise, in that situation you are no longer dominant. For roosters, if they can dictate when and where they get affection, they will start crowing. Think of it ask the rooster saying, "Hey, slave, get over here and pet me already!" This is impolite, and generally volatile behaviour and can even manifest into aggression.

You know the rooster that attacks anyone on sight when they approach the property, or when a stranger tries to get eggs from the hen house? That is a rooster who feels that he is dominant to the humans involved, and thus needn't be polite and ask for what he wants so much as just take it. This is inappropriate and unacceptable in a docile, tame bird, and it is perfectly within our control to teach the bird to be submissive to ALL humans no matter if they are strangers, young, or old by reinforcing that ALL humans have the ability to give and take as they please, and that the rooster ( or even an aggressive hen ) has no place in dictating any of this.

APPROPRIATE SOCIAL BEHAVIOURS AND SOCAILIZATION

After you make yourself head of the chicken coop, your chickens will look up to you to teach them how to behave appropriately, and it's up to you to warp their behaviours to your desires. All chickens will still have personalities, some will be shier than others, and some will be more confrontational, but you can ALWAYS teach them what is and is not appropriate behaviours. It is inappropriate for the shy chicken to run away from people, scream, or otherwise be fearful ( "shy" is NOT indicative of "fearful" ), and it is inappropriate for the confrontational chicken to pick fights with children, peck at eyes, or try to dictate the way the coop is run if it does not coincide with the way you want it to ( and even then, the chicken cannot think that the coop is being run that way because IT wants it to ).

For every negative behaviour, disagree the way a chicken would, and for every positive behaviour, agree the way a chicken would. Chickens disagree by disciplining one other with pecks or pinning behaviours, and agree with nuzzling, cooing, and feeding one another. A disciplining peck is generally a quick, sharp, and harsh action. It can take others by surprise if they are not totally aware of their poor behaviour, but is a method of putting everyone in line to behave in harmony with everyone else. A praising coo or nuzzle can be simulated by gently scratching the chicken's breast with your fingertips, or even massaging the back of their neck, while saying praise in a low, calm voice. And of course, there is always food as a wonderful praise for these birds - chickens tend to be VERY food-oriented.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that contrary to popular belief, a pecking order is NOT necessary for social harmony! Rather, allowing the chickens to decide who is where on the order is allowing them to overrule you as dominant. You are dominant, and therefore and dictate what behaviours you do and do not want in your flock. For me, my eldest rooster is top of the pecking order because he is the most well behaved and well trained. His place in the pecking order is not maintained by pecking the other chickens, but rather by the amount of attention and praise he gets, and that he is first choice for any special events such as feeding treats, going on walks ( or bike rides in my case ), doing exercises, and so forth. This makes the other chickens see a role model for their own behaviour, quickly understanding that the better they behave, the better they are treated.

This has almost totally eliminated any need I have to monitor introductions between my flock members, because they know that their place in the pecking order is ENTIRELY my choice. Just the other day, when my bantam sizzle ( silkie crossed with a frizzled cochin ) was acting up, I tossed it into the top cage with three standard-sized hens and a rooster for a few minutes while I cleaned up a mess it made. I only had to break up one minor scuffle, and then left them to their own devices for several minutes afterwards in total peace. Any other time I have heard about introducing chickens to existing flocks ( my bantams are separate from my standards ), precautions have to be taken lest a chicken end up injured or even dead. Keep in mind, however, that these ARE flocks that are generally just "birds out there that I feed, water, and get food from" and NOT generally refereed to as pets, as mine are.

You may want to exercise within your flock some general boundaries of what they are and are not allowed to do, and help them figure out what appropriate and inappropriate behaviours are. Without a very, very strict social structure, most animals deteriorate, and very quickly at that. They need someone there to help them learn what an appropriate level of energy is for play and other activities, and how to appropriately outlet their energies as well. Giving your animals tasks ( in the case of my chickens, just general exercises and simple commands ) greatly helps them learn boundaries and appropriate outlets for energy. I plan to build small "obstacle courses" with food at the end so that when my chickens want to eat, they have to accomplish a small exercise beforehand so that they have something to do to outlet their energy instead of just walking in circles all day, which brings us to our next subject..

ENTERTAINMENT

So now you are dominant in your chicken's eyes, and they understand what their boundaries are, but what about when you're not around? What about when you are? What do they do all day that helps them feel fulfilled and happy? Chickens are intelligent animals and require mental stimulation to be happy. Like parrots, chickens need toys that they can play with to be smarter, happier, more well-behaved birds. I give my chickens waded up pieces of newspaper that I've torn into about four-by-four inch squares or a little larger, and let them throw the balls around, chase them, and otherwise play. Sometimes I will tear paper into strips and hang the strips of paper from the ceiling of their cage, or wave it through the bars and let them figure out how to pull it out, or toss it around.

I try to entice my chickens pray drives, too. This is an essential part of being a chicken, and needs to be exercised for a good quality of life. Chickens are natural predators to bugs, small snakes, lizards, and even mice and shrews. Heck, if a chicken goes down, other chickens will eat it - meat is an essential part of a chicken's diet, albeit a relatively small part compared to the amount of grass they should be eating. If I catch a spider, beetle, fly, or ant in my room, I hold them over my chickens and entice them to go after the bugs. Once they're good enough at pecking the bug from my hand, I let the bug go in their cage.

Some may say that this is cruel, but the chicken needs to have its pray drive stimulated, and they need that part of their diet, too. I am not pulling legs or wings off the bugs before they go into the chicken cage, and the chickens tend to snap them up relatively quickly so there is little trauma on the bug's behalf - besides, bug psychology is much different from that of mammals such as feeder mice, which I do NOT feed my chickens. Like snakes who eat mice or crickets, we have to understand that chickens are omnivorous, and actual actively hunt amongst eating leaves, fruits, and seeds amongst other foods. We have various toys to stimulate cat and dog pray drives, and if you can find a toy to stimulate your chicken's pray drive and have issues feeding them live insects, do that instead - but one way or another, their pray drive needs to be stimulated from time to time.

Chickens LOVE spending time together, as well. Often, the best entertainment you can give them is another chicken to play with. They will walk around together, eat together, and do all sorts of things together just because they love interacting with one another. Some will even argue that a chicken cannot adequately exist without another chicken, but I think this philosophy is the same as with dogs - two or more dogs definitely benefits everyone's thoughts and feelings, but if the owner is oriented enough towards spending time with their pets, it is not totally necessary. I have a flock of seven chickens because I personally believe they feed off each other, and I enjoy their company enough to keep many, but if worse came to worst, I would keep only one to be my personal companion.

Another way to entertain your chickens is by giving them new and interesting foods from time to time. I occasionally spice up their diet by giving them a spoonful of cat food every now and again. They always become quite excited when I crack open a can of cat food, or even tuna, and suddenly all the tricks I've been working with them on that were so difficult days prior seem a cakewalk when treats come into play!

Tricks and exercises are another great way to keep your chickens entertained. An hour a day asking them to sit, stand, come, wait, roll over, up on your arm, and all those other tricks will keep them mentally engaged and feeling fulfilled, especially if you show great joy over their accomplishments and cooperation with you. You can also exercise them by handling them in unusual ways ( holding their wings, playing with toes, comb, or wattles, picking them up under their wings like you'd pick up a small child, raising them in the air and tipping them to face you, and nuzzling their breast, tossing them gently, and encouraging them to land on your arm or be caught by you ). These exercises and tricks helps keep them engaged, and helps reinforce your position as a benevolent leader.

MISCELLANEOUS

On top of these past subjects, there's some miscellaneous things you can try to keep your chickens feeling submissive, safe, comfortable, entertained, and generally happy. Go out and pick fresh grass, even if you allow them to graze the fresh grass, and put it in their enclosure. I'm not entirely sure what it is about fresh grass simply BEING there, but my roosters consistently crow considerably less whenever they are exposed to fresh grass.

A good, well-rounded, healthy diet also adds to chicken happiness and considerably affects how much chickens are prone to whine, cry, scream, and crow. This is where feeding them bugs, and allowing them to graze in a field or supplement with meat ( cooked or raw ), raw vegetables and fruits, compost, and even some forms of yard waste ( look up what you're giving them and whether or not it's poisonous first ) can help make your chicken happier. Things that are high in grease, fat, or sugar should be avoided at all costs ( except good fats, especially for underweight chickens - but there ARE bad fats to be aware of ), but most compost consisting of vegetable, fruit, and meat matter tends to supplement chickens quite well if you take your compost out every day - but let it sit much longer, and it can harm your chickens, so be aware of how fresh your compost is!

Chickens love being paid attention to, so always make sure that you're at least vaguely aware of what they're doing. I always coo at my chickens when they make excited noises, and bark at them when they're doing something they shouldn't.

METHODS FOR DEALING WITH CROWING

When all else fails, your rooster crows and there's nothing you can do about it, you can always try some of these tricks:

Socks

That's right, socks. When all else fails, put a sock on their head. When dealing with roosters, and especially cockerels who are just learning how to crow, and learning when and where crowing is appropriate, I use socks that are breathable, but still fit snugly over their heads. I don't like using socks that warp the comb in any way, and short socks are generally a no-no since they can kick the socks off really easily, but a sock that goes all the way down the neck to their breast ( as far down as you can get it, in other words ), tends to do the trick. I have only once had a rooster crow when a sock was on his head, and that was a rather particular circumstance.

I use socks primarily when I have a new rooster and will be gone for just a few hours, or when a rooster decides to crow in the morning when I still want to sleep and it can damn well wait until I'm ready to get up to start complaining about whatever it's complaining about. I use baby socks for bantams and chicks, and I use adult-sized fuzzy, ankle socks for adult standard-sized chickens. Tighter fitting socks work better for chickens with smaller combs ( especially such as rose, pea, or walnut combs ), but looser socks are required for chickens with larger combs to keep from deforming the comb, and possibly creating a painful condition, but whatever sock you use make sure that it is breathable and doesn't hurt the chicken in any way.

When applying the sock, I take the crowing chicken out of the cage and then sit on my knees, pressing their rear end against my knees. Then I roll up the sock, and with my pinky and ring finger on one hand, I grab the head, place the sock on their beak, and unroll the sock over their head. It's usually at this point that they'll squirm and freak out if they are prone to, so I let them wiggle a little bit, and reassure them that everything is fine, then I pull the sock down over their neck and down to their breast. Then I pet and scratch them to make the sock a HAPPY experience, and leave them until it's time to come back and take the sock off.

The sock is in relation to masks used on other animals. It's a general rule that noise is distress, and covering the eyes diminishes stress. Alligators and crocodiles have their eyes taped shut, hawks and owls get little leather masks, dogs and cats get full-face muzzles, and so forth. The idea struck me when I asked myself what falconers do to calm their birds. Ideally, I would have actual chicken-masks for my noise-makers ( I used a sock on a hen that was making a fuss the other day and it worked wonderfully, so roosters crowing is not the only use of socks ), but in the interim, socks work fine.

Towels

Towels work very similarly to how socks work, except this is for the chicken that's either too skilled at getting a sock off, too small for a sock, or maybe you don't have any socks to spare for your chickens or ran out of chicken-socks. Instead, you can wrap your chicken in a towel, set him in a box, then put a blanket and / or pillow over the box. Confining the chicken to a soft, warm environment calms them down to the point that they happily just go to sleep, and will happily snooze until you decide it's time for them to wake up.

String or twine on the leg

I've used this method only a few times for VERY insistent crowers. I DO NOT leave the twine or string on the legs for very long, and DO NOT tie it very tight, either. Every time they crowed, I would tug the twine, just to enforce that crowing is undesirable, and something vaguely unpleasant will happen when they crow. These two were masters at escaping the socks ( granted, I didn't have any that fit them properly ), and weren't always privy to sleeping in a box. They were very high-energy and needy, like the border collies of the chicken world - they were campines. For them a much more direct approach was appropriate. I pinned them for crowing whenever they did, or tugged on a string when they crowed, disrupting the crow and giving them a small incentive at a time to knock it off.

That being said, I do NOT condone the use of any of these tools as life-long remedies. Your chickens are NOT well-balanced enough if you have to rely on these methods, but often times they can be used to work towards your goal. Nowadays I use ALL of very, very seldom compared to when I started. When I started I would have multiple chickens in socks, towels, and / or boxes at a time, sometimes multiple times a day. Now I MIGHT use one or the other techniques twice a week, if that, and sometimes we go a month or more without a crow.

All in all, chickens need a dominant person to look up to, who will teach them boundaries and appropriate socailization techniques, they need an environment which is stable, strict, and loving, they need entertainment and to have their senses and minds stimulated every day, they need good diets, and some methods can be used to mediate crowing from time to time. All in all, crowing is an issue that is entirely up to the owner whether or not it exists, and to what degree.

Any other questions, comments, or critiques on this subject I would be more than willing to discuss in the comments, so please feel free to leave a comment if I did not answer your questions in adequate detail! In the mean time, I'm going to crash right here and now and hope I'll find internet in the morning so I can post this.

004 - How I Raise and Bomb-proof My Chooks

One note before I open this post that I forgot to mention in the last post: The crop. The crop is an organ birds use to digest food by swallowing rocks and allowing the rocks to mash up the food before it is passed on to the stomach. However, you can easy feel the crop at all times, and it is especially prominent and even looks and feels frighteningly like a tumour to the novice bird owner. It lies right on the breast, below the neck, usually off to the right side and NOT centred. Don't worry about this, it's normal.

And with that, onto the post of the day...

This post will be on how I have raised my chickens from hatching to where they are now - well-behaved, well-mannered, quiet, pleasant, happy animals. The two topics I'll discuss are raising and bomb-proofing. "Raising" refers to only what they need to learn to live healthy, intellectually stimulating lives, whereas "bomb-proofing" refers to how to desensitize an animal to various stimuli that might frighten them - children, fast movements, loud noises, other animals ( especially predators if the animal you are bomb-proofing is typically a prey animal ), so on and so forth.

I use bomb-proofing because my goal for my chickens is to have them obtain therapy licenses to be able to go into hospitals, retirement homes, schools, etc. and be able to sit on someone's lap and be otherwise handled. I also want them able to go into a veterinarian's office and be handled when in need of medical procedures if needed, so being okay with restraints is a must for my chickens.

Raising Chickens Healthy in Body, Mind, and Soul

Humans aren't the only ones who need soup for the soul - many animals, including chickens, need it as well. However, the soul isn't the only part that needs tending to - there's also a very intelligent, intellectual side to chickens and, of course, the physical aspect that keeps them alive.

Body

The first thing I consider when raising my chickens is where, or where to put them! I have jumbo dog cages, huge aquarium tanks, tiny bird cages, but no matter what I know I need to put them somewhere that's warm ( or at least capable of holding in heat ), and has room enough for food and water as well as the chick[s].

For chicks, I tend to lean towards aquarium tanks. The tanks are made of waterproof sealed glass, which I can fill with a thin layer of sand, dirt, or any kind of litter, and while being able to watch my chicks easily through the glass, the glass also helps keep them insulated much more than a barred cage would. Tops to aquariums also tend to be easy to find, but I usually use some form of bird netting, mesh, a grate, or a blanket. Aquariums also come in a wide variety of sizes, so I can start my chicks in the smallest one ( give your chicks too much space and they tend to huddle in one corner, but give them a small cage at first, and they'll be more adventurous right off ), and work up as they grow until they're old enough to go into the large dog cages, and finally, a coop when I get one.

Now, chick starting enclosures vary about as much as coops and tractors ( a smallish enclosure, typically without a bottom, that you can cart around your yard so the chickens always have fresh grass beneath them ). I've seen one that I absolutely adore, and wish I had - it's a stilted enclosure put in someone's living room. It's very long, and fairly wide, and quite tall. The top of the enclosure is probably about up to the shoulder of an average-height person, and it has a mesh top that locks into place with a heat lamp on one side, and a little mini-coop ( also called brooder boxes ) under the lamp. There's plenty of room for food and water, and litter is easily cleaned. One side ( the side facing the living room ) is made entirely of glass, so you can always watch your chicks and their antics. I do so want this starter enclosure.

Now, most people use heat lamps to keep their chicks warm, and I used heat lamps for quite awhile, but I found that the light made it hard for me to sleep at night ( my chickens are all kept in my room ), and my chicks often became grumpy and upset when they were exposed to light for days on end. To remedy this, I often carried my young chicks with me in my scarf or in a satchel, allowing them to sleep during the day, and eat, drink, and play all night.

However, as I complained about this to a house mate, she gave me an electric hot pad, which I have been using quite successfully with my newest batch of chicks. They go to sleep at night, wake up during the day, are on the same schedule as everyone else, and seem generally much happier than previous broods I've raised using the heat lamp method. Using the hot pad, they also get to experience the world from day one much more as a normal chick would with their mother - their mother gives them warmth once they have had enough frolicking around outside, but they still experience the normal temperature of their environment while away from their mother. Using the hot pad, I'm able to simulate this by giving them an area that is consistently warm to their liking, but also enabling them to run around their tank at a normal temperature.

It seems to me that they have developed temperature tolerance much quicker and without the various complications that using a heat lamp can cause. With the heat lamp, I have caught enclosures on fire ( and the chicks inside - no worries, they all survived with no lasting damage ), caused hypothermia when a bulb has blown or when having difficulty finding an adequate bulb, caused hyperthermia when using too strong of a wattage, having to monitor temperature very carefully, and monitor reduction of temperature week by week, and many, many other aspects. Using the hot pad, the chicks self-regulate and during colder nights I turn the heat up by a notch or two, and during the day I have it on its lowest setting. The chicks have also done a very good job telling me if they are uncomfortable, and I have had less complaints with the hot pad than I have ever had with the heat lamps.

Also with the hot pad, I've had less need to constantly refill water due to evaporation - and for some reason, chickens burying their water dishes. Now, the one thing I dislike about the aquariums is that I like to train my chickens to drink out of water bottles like the ones that are put into rabbit or guinea pig cages, and in an aquarium, there's not really a grate that you can clip your water bottle to. I have, however, put a small section of grate into an aquarium, burying one end in the litter and taping the top end to the side of the aquarium, and that way I can hang my water bottles, but it is tedious to clean and maintain.

For chicks I usually start with a very, very shallow bowl or even something as shallow as a jar lid. I usually take my smallest chick when first introducing them to their water dish, and stick them IN the dish, while full of water, to see if they can make it out easily had they accidentally fallen in, themselves. If they have issues getting out of the dish itself, or if the dish is deep enough that the water level touches their belly, I find a new dish. I have only ever had one chick drown, and that's because I was rooming thirteen little chicks with four chicks that were about two weeks older than them, so the bigger chicks and the sheer number of chicks required a larger water dish. And even then, only one fell victim.

I have tried placing the bowl above the level of the litter to avoid chickens burying their water dish, as has been recommended to me, but I generally find that chickens try to stand on the edge of their dish and therefore knock it over, causing litter to quickly become a disgusting quagmire, and emptying their water even quicker than had I not even bothered to raise it. What I have found works, however, is to bury it slightly, which allows chickens to treat the dish as a puddle - no need to stand on it and knock it over, and though it WILL become buried, I find this method much better than letting them knock water all over the place.

Now say you have money and are able to buy fancy water dishes. The best dish I have found is a deep bowl with a large cannister of water placed upside-down on one end of the bowl - this works in a similar way as water towers work. The cannister of water continuously fills up the bowl, but only to the point that the water becomes level with the spout, until the water falls out. The base tends to be broad and well-enforced, with broad, tall edges. This covers ALL bases that I have found recommended for water dispensers - it is raised, yet with such broad edges and base, and especially with the weight of the water cannister, it does not knock over when chickens decide to stand on it. Due to being raised, it does not get litter in it as chickens scratch for food, and I have found that something about it makes it unpleasant for chickens to roost or otherwise drop stool into the water, so the water stays fresh and clean.

Still, I swear by water bottles... so long as they don't leak. Water bottles hold water until a chicken wants to drink from it, there is no way for dirt or stool to enter the water supply, they're quick and easy to maintain, and keep water for quite some time before needing to be refilled in most cases. My chickens have stayed best hydrated when using water bottles, and, being chickens, they don't forget how to drink out of dishes or puddles if the need arises.

I have found it quick and easy to teach my chickens how to drink from water bottles. I take a moment to take each chick ( or even full-grown chicken ) and place his / her beak INTO the spigot, and repeat until they tip their head back and acknowledge that water comes from there. I do this twice a day, until they catch on - usually within about four days. One of my broods I introduced to water bottles from day one and they were learning really well, but the bottle I had leaked very badly. I had them on bowls until recently when I found a new water bottle, and due to their knocking over and burying their bowl, they were quite thirsty so the moment they saw a drop of water fall from the water bottle, they all automatically knew exactly where the water was and how to get it. For the first couple of days they were clumsy, pecking the spigot, and trying to bite it, until they finally started tipping their heads, pushing their beaks into the spigot, lapping up the water, then tip their head back and drink. Now everyone has the water supplier they need, and everyone is quite happy.

As for food, I like to stick to dishes when I can, but as with water, dishes can be knocked over, and some chickens even think dishes are nests to be sat in. I worked hard training my chickens NOT to sit in their food dishes ( give them a light bap on the head and prod them to move ), and now none of my chickens try to roost in their food dishes anymore, but it still takes a very specific dish to hold food. The only dish I have that can withstand being stood on is a large bowl I made in pottery class.

All other cages, I toss food in on the ground ( other cages are enclosed tanks, so chickens scratching for food isn't an issue ). Chickens have fun scratching for their food, so it's not too much of a big deal. With young chicks, however, I tend to use dishes until they start tipping over or burying their dishes, just so they have one uniform location to find food until they learn what food is ( usually the dish is retired within a few weeks ).

My house mate feeds her chickens compost. Anything from vegetable matter to grease and gristle and coffee grounds. I personally support giving chickens compost, but I don't do it myself because, well... I'm not going to tolerate rotting food matter in my room. If they were outside, they could have all the compost they would want, but since they're not, I, personally, do not use compost. I will, however, occasionally ( I try to aim for once or twice a week ) go outside and pick fresh grass, dandelions, and clovers for my chickens. Chickens allowed to free-range tend to get well over half of their essential nutrients from grass, and fresh grass tends to help keep my roosters from crowing ( likely, because they are happy ).

To spice up my chickens crumble diet, I also top off with a couple spoonfuls of cat food - generally, Friskies or Fancy Feast brands. I don't worry about chicken or turkey-flavoured cat food because naturally, chickens tend to be cannibalistic, and if it's in a can, it's unlikely they'll realize that their room mates would taste the same. The cat food is a real treat, and the chickens love it. Some people use meal worms or grubs for treats, and I have heard great things about that, as well - especially grubs since you can grow and cultivate them on your own.

When my chickens seem to be feeling down or a little ill, I have brewed them a cocktail of yogurt, crushed garlic, vinegar, and rolled oats ( or plain oatmeal ). I try to avoid anything with sugar, because animals ( including humans ) aren't built to deal with sugar, so I would advise plain yogurt and plain rolled oats. Despite what you might hear about birds being lactose intolerant, I have found little to no issue feeding my birds yogurt from time to time to help boost their immune system.

In this cocktail, the benefits include:

* Yogurt - helps add good bacteria to the digestion tract that fight and consume other bacterias

* Garlic - an overall immune-booster like vitamin C ( be careful not to add too much! Only about one clove per ten chicks, or one clove per two or three full-grown, standard-sized chickens - garlic CAN be detrimental to chickens in large quantities )

* Vinegar - like garlic, helps boost immune systems, though both garlic and vinegar work in different ways

* Rolled Oats - gives the mixture texture, as I have found my chickens more likely to enjoy chowing down on something with texture than a sloppy, goopy mess

And lastly, for body, exercise. Your chickens need exercise. This can come in the form of letting them out to roam every day if your chickens are free-range, or it could be in the form of teaching your chicken tricks ( "fetch" and "come" are common ), or even aspects of physical therapy ( moving your chicken's wings, legs, toes, etc. to extend in various ways ).

I try to use a little of all of these. When I have the ability, I like to take a few chickens at a time with me out into the field. I'm a little hesitant about taking them ALL out, especially unsupervised, since there is a family of hawks that live on the outskirts of the field and hunt the field frequently, but taking a few out at a time, especially when leashed, is a wonderful way to get everyone some outdoor time, exercise, and a bit of extra nutrients, especially if they catch some bugs.

I teach my chickens many tricks that can exercise them. I have not yet taught a chicken to fetch, but I would like to work on it. Instead I have Sit, Play Dead, we're working on Roll Over, but mostly ( and most impressively, if I might say so myself ), I have taught several of my chickens to ride my bike with me. Balancing on the handlebars does a lot to strengthen their legs. On top of all of this, I also play "chicken toss" with my friends, which helps teach chickens to fly and use their wings, and also helps them learn to trust people, since people will catch them and give them praise upon landing. This also helps me train my chickens to aim their landings, and be generally more manoeuvrable in the air.

Several of my chickens I also give messages and stretch their limbs. I take their wings and pull them upwards, and down, back and forward, encouraging my chickens to reach their full potential in range of motion while also gently working their muscles, and I do the same for their legs, helping bring the leg all the way back, and then forward ( I often times find forward easier because they will hold your finger and allow you to pull ). The trick here is to NOT force them to make these movements quickly, but rather ease their limbs into these NATURAL positions, and stop forcing their movement as soon as you meet resistance ( other than the chicken not being used to the motion and pulling away ). Giving your chicken massages regularly will also help loosen their muscles which will help them perform better.

Mind

Intellectual exercises for you chickens are also important. To start with, a mother chicken gives her chicks boundaries from day one. I also begin bomb-proofing at day one, but more on that later. Psychological needs of a chicken include boundaries, exploration, learning, interaction with mates, and pleasing their flock leader.

Boundaries are important because it helps the chick learn its place in its social hierarchy - if you aren't tough on your chick to begin with, you might be setting your chick up for failure upon introducing it to the rest of your flock. Well-disciplined chicks tend to get along better with established flocks, in my experience. Well-disciplined adults are also important, and when both my adult and chick are well-disciplined I tend to find little to no fighting whatsoever.

Now, one thing Millan ( Cesar Millan - "The Dog Whisperer" ) states, which I strongly agree with, is that there is a very definite difference between "discipline" and "punishment". Punishment is when you are mean or act out of malice, and your motives for WHY punishment is being given is unclear and thus only traumatizes or terrorizes the recipient. Discipline, however, is when you are calm and direct, and express disagreement with a behaviour. Discipline is a way of setting boundaries, and is always done calmly and clearly, whether "clear" means words to your child, a quick touch or "bite" to your dog, or "peck" to your chicken.

Though I sometimes become frustrated with my chickens, I try to NEVER punish them. I try to always make certain that I know what I'm unhappy with, and communicate exactly that - take nothing out on them, and if I feel myself becoming over-emotional over disagreeing with their behaviours, I either take a moment to take a deep breath and ground myself, or walk away from the situation for a few minutes to clear my head. Discipline must always be done with love.

For my chicks, discipline means not screaming for attention ( a scream or shout should ONLY be used when they need something - food, water, or warmth for instance ), not crowing ( again, unless it's necessary such as lack of necessities ), no aggression or fear towards humans, no rushing food or water dishes, and many other rules my birds must obey.

For the first few days, we test each other. They scream, and I respond to see if anyone is hurt, cold, overheated, thirsty, or hungry, but if nothing is obviously wrong, everyone gets a gentle "peck" and I go back to what I was doing. If they continue to scream, I may look deeper into the situation depending on the level of urgency - you can often tell a difference in tone between true distress and attention-seeking.

This is also where training and teaching tricks comes in handy. Chickens are flock animals, and just as dogs are pack animals, they are eager to please the head of their flock. If you can teach them something that makes you happy - be it cute or useful - then they will feel happy being able to please you. When my chickens are calm while I handle them, I scratch their heads and breasts, and tell them what good chickies they are. Their usual response is to close their eyes and coo happily, and totally relax.

Chickens also need new things to keep them interested and happy. For many of my chickens, this comes in a form of a paper ball. I first introduced the balls to keep my chickens from eating the newspaper that I set down as bedding, but quickly found that they liked to play with the balls, from tossing them to shaking them. I try to do little things for them now and then like stick something to the ceiling or wall of their cage ( such as a clover leaf ) that they can peck at, or sprinkle some food on a platform just above their heads that they can still reach if they stand straight up and stretch.

Soul

This one may be debatable, but I strongly believe all creatures have souls that need to be fed just as much as we do, and the first step to feeding the soul is to make sure all physical needs are met, and then to make sure psychological needs are met. After that is enrichment. I like to enrich my chickens lives by playing music for them when I'm not home, and taking them with me, especially when I go into crows so that they can meet new people and be appreciated by many people at once instead of just me.

With Bo, Socrates, and my new little Japanese boy, Sindri, I help enrich their lives by taking them on bike rides. They enjoy the ride, and even more enjoy the attention they gain from meeting people who want to pet them and enjoy their presence. Petsmart and Petco are both wonderful places to take them, but I don't oft make it to the stores unless I need a new water bottle, harness, or otherwise ( AND have the money to shell out for it ).

Sindri's mate recently died, and he's been behaving slow, lethargic, passive, uninterested, and generally as someone would while grieving, and recent studies have helped prove that chickens do, in fact, grieve. In order to combat this, I bought him a tiny harness ( Bo and Socrates use cat harness - I had to buy Sindri a small kitten harness ), which can hook up to one of the two leashes I have quite well, and he rides on top of my hand while I bike. He still behaves somewhat uninterested some of the time, closing his eyes and dozing off, even allowing himself to just flop over onto my arm, but most of the time his eyes are wide and bright, as his tiny head flicks back and forth, watching the landscape go by. Today when I took him out and let him run around a park, for the first time, I saw him rear up, flap his wings, and make several happy chirrups.

Now, some may say that I am humanizing chickens, but I assure you, that is the last thing I want to do. I know that people in America tend to humanize their pets, which causes a great deal of grief on their pets since they aren't humans and don't think like humans. I assure you, I am using human-like terms in order for the average American to understand where I'm coming from, and I would also note, much to my surprise, chickens seem to share many thought processes with humans such as grief and love. I was sceptical of "love" the first time I heard someone mention it, but every time I saw Sindri with his mate, they were never more than a couple feet away from each other, and if they were stationary, it was guaranteed that Sindri would have his wing over his mate. At first, I thought it coincidence, that she probably just nuzzled underneath him and he was such a passive boy that he probably just left his wing there, but when I saw the nuzzling, I knew I should question this thought process - he in fact, lifted his wing for her to crawl under, and once she was comfortable, he would drape his wing over her and then make himself comfortable as well. And the way he behaves after she passed really says a lot to me.

Bomb-Proofing

I find bomb-proofing to be one of the most important aspects of raising an animal, any animal. Bomb-proofing is especially mandatory if you have children, or expect your animal to be around children very often, as well as if you expect your animal to be in crowds at any point.

I use bomb-proofing to desensitize my chickens to everything short of outright abuse. I rub them like someone might energetically rub their dog, I scratch their rumps ( I have found many chickens to be unnerved by touching of the rump ), I hold their wings, feet, tails, beaks, combs, and wattles, lie them on their backs ( often on my chest as I lie down, too ), I hold them upside-down above me and nuzzle them, telling them what good birds they are all the while, and what I start with first and foremost is rubbing the chicks all over my face. On top of these actions, I also exercise patience while holding onto specific body parts, or holding a chicken in a particular restraint so that they never have to suffer from stress if any of them end up in an auction or a veterinarian's office.

Why do I do this? Because it helps an animal be well-mannered in public for one thing, but it also minimizes the things that stress them out, which leads to a happier, healthier, more enriched life overall. I want my chickens to be around children and other animals, and I especially want to be able to give them semi-frequent physical exams for quick tests in case they start growing a mass ( usually "tumour" ), have respiratory issues, or otherwise need to be checked out or handled. Restraints are very important to me, because EVERY animal will go to the vet someday, so why make it a stressful experience if it can be helped? Also, if your animal is EVER going to be around children, or in public ( which often has children ), a child WILL eventually try to pull your pets tail, push them, grab their fur / feathers, poke them, or what-have-you. It's unfair to your animal not to prepare them for these experiences.

For one, I want my chickens to be therapy animals. A therapy animal has to be well-mannered, well-behaved, and above all else, tolerant. I do NOT want my chickens so tolerant that they take a beating without so much as batting an eye or squeaking, but I DO want them to be able to take a single tug on the feathers, and trust that if it happens, I will be there to take care of it and monitor their well-being. I want them to feel safe in knowing that they have never been, nor ever will be, seriously injured in my presence, and therefore are able to trust my judgement fully and not feel the NEED to be aggressive or fearful.

There are several types of bomb-proofing that can be done. There's physical bomb-proofing ( being touched, poked, pet ), sound bomb-proofing ( fireworks, thunder, gunshots ), visual bomb-proofing ( bright lights, darkness ), and psychological bomb-proofing ( helping prey not fear predator, overcoming fears and phobias ).

Physical Bomb-proofing

Physical bomb-proofing is usually what I start with, because it's generally the easiest and helps build trust between dominant human and submissive bird very quickly. This is the act of helping your animal not feel threatened by things touching them, no matter where they might be touched.

I start with physical bomb-proofing just by holding my chickens. With chicks, this is fairly easy, but a full-grown and mature chicken may be a little more difficult. When my house mate gave me a full-grown and mature Welsummer rooster who had very little in the way of human contact ( and even less in the way of POSITIVE human contact ), I started our relationship by spreading out a towel over my lap and watching a movie while he sat in my lap, and I either very gently pet him or just rested my hands on his back. I also took him into my room and had him sleep on the foot of my bed, partly because it helped minimize crowing in the morning ( which is where neighbours complain about it ), but also because when chickens wake up to something, they feel more comfortable with it ( which is why if introducing a chicken during the day doesn't work, sometimes it WILL work if you stick the new chicken in the coop while everyone is asleep and it will ).

After he was okay with me picking him up, and sitting on my lap, I started gently patting his head. Every time he could scream, I would give him a peck which varied in intensity in accordance to the scream or sound of alarm, and when he was silent after a peck, I would scratch his head instead. He quickly learned not to panic, and to just be calm and complacent.

After he stopped panicking when I would approach his head to pet him, I started gently pinching his comb, and stroking his wattles, then gently scratching the very top of his head, and worked up to the point where he was totally comfortable with me holding his tail ( because he had WONDERFUL tail feathers that I loved to twist and twirl around my fingers ), scratching his comb, stroking his wattles, scratching his breast, or even petting his back right down to his rump. He was totally content.

My house mates chose to slaughter him since he was making noise, not very fertile AT ALL, and didn't grow up with the social skills to deal with the hens and had killed one of the bantams by being too rough with her. Regardless, the work I put into bomb-proofing him paid off because in the end, he didn't struggle to be slaughtered at all, and didn't even scream. To me, even though the chicken I was dealing with died, that was a success because he died without fear, without trauma.

Other chickens and other forms of physical bomb-proofing, I usually start rubbing my face against them ( or rubbing them against my face if they're small enough ), because let's face it, kids like to hug things and usually hugging means also nuzzling their faces against it. Children also like to get close to things their interested in, and if my chickens were to peck a child's eye because they got too close, that would be unacceptable for public.

After getting them used to being rubbed, pet, picked up, and held, I start holding onto beaks, combs, wattles, feet, and wings. Most of these are for the sake of restraining, if something were to happen to them. For instance, there's been a few occasions in which a veterinarian has had to look in Bo's mouth. I have trained him the command "Open up" and more universally "Let me see" to mean that I am going to grab him, and not let go until I'm done doing what I have to do. In the case of "Open up," I am asking him to tolerate me grabbing his comb and wattles, and pulling apart in order to open his mouth, usually to see if he has swallowed something he shouldn't. I bomb-proofed him to this by gently stroking his wattles, and from time to time gently tugging on them. That worked up to "lip-synching" to music, and now he lets me open his mouth and look inside whenever I want.

"Let me see" also refers to his wings and feet. I also start these at a young age ( chicks don't have combs and wattles you can grab, usually even if they're male ), so that they are learning these skills as boundaries and thus, psychological fulfilment. I like these two restraints as well because the anatomy of both the wing and foot are quite fascinating in my opinion, and some of the most beautiful colourations on birds aren't evident until they spread open their wings.

Audio Bomb-proofing

I have taken several of my chickens with me to fireworks, fairs, and many other very loud, boisterous places. After taking time to work up trust while physically bomb-proofing your chicken, the rest of these should be a cakewalk, because the first few loud noises they will look at you as if to ask "What do I do now?!" and from what I've experienced, so long as I keep a calm demeanour and behave as if it's normal, my chicken will hunker down and go "Oh, okay then," and that's that. I've never had to do more to bomb-proof my chickens from sound, even from small children screaming at alarmingly loud and high pitches right in their ears.

However, if your chicken IS afraid of sound, you can try finding a recording of the sound and sitting your chicken down in your lap. Play the sound, first at a low volume and make sure your chicken is calm. Sometimes they squirm and flail. I put my hand on their back and keep them sitting, but let them flap their wings in order to expend the pent-up anxiety. After a moment, your chicken will realize that it is not going anywhere, and calm down. Your chicken MAY be panting at this point - don't worry, this is normal, especially for an anxious chicken.

I will usually keep hold of them in my lap, and neither look at them, make noise, or move my hands until they calm down, then I will look at them and pet them gently, calmly. I try to make little noise, but sometimes a coo or an excited-happy noise can help the chicken takes its mind off of the scary noise. As the chicken relaxes, you can slowly turn the volume of the sound up and up, and repeat this day after day until the chicken is no longer fearful of the noise.

Visual Bomb-proofing

Visual bomb-proofing is probably the easiest that I have come across... and likely because it's the least common. During fireworks, my chickens had a few objections to some fireworks that lit up like flash bombs, but again, with the trust gained in physical bomb-proofing, they looked to me and I behaved like nothing was out of the ordinary, which told them all would be well, and it was.

However, almost all of my chicks have had objections to darkness the first couple times they experienced it. I think, mostly, because they can't see and don't know where others are. The first few times I encounter this, I go and check on the chick, who has usually wandered away from the rest of the brood and is cold or scared that it doesn't know where everyone else is, but after a few times of helping it find its way back, I will ignore it so that it can learn on its own. Usually after not much more than a minute, the frightened peeps will turn to contented coos as it finds is way back to its brood.

Fast movements are similar, but unlike the innate looking at me and seeing that I'm telling them they're fine, they will often need help with this one. Chickens are, generally, prey animals ( though to some smaller animals such as mice, lizards, frogs, snakes, and of course insects, chickens are predators ), and as such, chickens instinctively fear fast movements.

To cure this, I will hold a chicken, pet it, lure it into a calm state then gently pat its head. Often times the head-patting can look like a hawk swooping down at the chicken, or a paw or claw swiping. I have had at least two chickens deathly afraid of things moving overhead, especially fast movements towards them, and they would duck and scream in the event. I helped them with this by setting them in my lap and "menacing" them by waving my hand ( slowly at first ) above their head, in front of their face, or towards and away from the side of their face ( where their full vision could be on my hand ). The less they reacted, the more praise they would get.

I even got to the point where I would flail my hand, or swing it in as if about to slap them, but stop and scratch them. I ONLY went to this point once they were comfortable with my hand moving around them at a moderate pace - and I NEVER risked actually hitting the chicken.

Psychological Bomb-proofing

Psychological bomb-proofing, or fighting instinct and phobias, is probably the hardest one to deal with on this list. This is likely because instincts are hard-wired into the animal, and phobias are irrational fears that have come to stick for some reason or another - usually, their handler's fault for accidentally approaching a subject wrong.

Instincts I find a little easier to re-wire, because chickens respond well to positive reinforcement and gentle discipline - remember, discipline, not punishment, as it should always be done calmly, clearly, and out of love and not malice or frustration. I have helped chickens to not be afraid of dogs and cats by bomb-proofing them up to this point as I have described, then have them on my lap, or near me while introduced to a large, predatory animal, which I make certain is behaving appropriately towards my birds, as their trust in me relies solely on the fact that I can control their environment in such a way as to be safe for them.

Phobias, on the other hand, are a little trickier. It is not always necessary to find the origin of a phobia, though the origin can give some insight on how to approach the situation, but usually gently coaxing through the situation is all that is needed. The key is to make certain the animal is making the choice to go through the situation with you simply encouraging it to do so, not you dragging it through the situation and FORCING it to cope - that can even make things worse if done wrong.

Specific phobias are another post all together, though, and probably won't happen for a long, long time. Unless someone asks for a specific phobia to be touched on.

As always, any questions, comments, concerns about my posts, or requests on what I should write about in the future, please Email me or leave me a comment. Please Email if you feel your statement is urgent, but comment for requests of topics or less urgent statements or inquiries. Thank you!