Why Dog Trainers Should Train Chickens

[corvus]

Trainer’s are not “bonded” to their chickens. Chickens do not have big brown eyes. Trainers do not have bad (or good!) chicken training habits because they’ve never trained a chicken before, thus avoiding the baggage often taken to dog training workshops. You will not be showing your chickens at the next performance event, nor will you be taking them home, so there is no pressure on what will happen in the future. You probably do not have a library full of chicken training books and DVD's to influence you, much less televisions shows on chicken training.

Training a chicken is a stretch and a boost to your mechanical skills. The average chicken is faster than the average dog, giving you a chance to improve your coordination and timing.

Chickens will freeze or fly away if they don’t like the way you are training them. Unlike dogs, you will know immediately if you are taking advantage of a chicken or pushing too hard too fast. Chickens don’t give their trainers a second chances as often as our dogs do.

I want a chicken. I have a hare and a rabbit, but they don't feed at a high rate like chickens do. What non-dogs have you trained and what did it teach you?

[The Spotted Devil]

My cats have certainly helped me train my Dalmatian I also have 3 chickens but I'm happy for them to do what they do best - which is keep the weeds down, poo everywhere and lay the most delicious eggs! Actually, corvus....now you've got me thinking....... Need to get my research on track first then might have a play.

[Are You Serious Jo]

Whoever wrote that obviously doesn't know chickens He/she should go out and tell my two hand raised chickens they aren't bonded to me and while he/she is at it tell them they should be flying, rather than running or walking away from things that don't please them

[Aidan]

I believe the person who wrote that was referring to the chickens at Bob Bailey's Chicken Camps (who are not hand-reared). A pet chicken would be a different story.

[Are You Serious Jo]

A snippet posted in isolation doesn't help the reader, how would anyone who doesn't know about Bob Bailey's Chicken Camps know what he/she is referring to when using the word trainer.

Training other animals has taught me flexibility and to treat each species as a completely different, not a variation of the previous species.

[Aussienot]

I think the idea is to train an animal that you have no emotional investment. Training a feedlot pig to negotiate an obstacle course taught me a lot about shaping and timing. Having no shared language, no behavioural expectations of each other, and no past relationship to fall back on, the only thing available is pure learning theory - and heaps of rice cracker pieces.

Training my pet cat tricks taught me patience, and also humility. A cat does what it wants when it wants, and your training behaviour gets modified as much as the animal's behaviour does.

[pipsqueak]

I've trained a rat to ring a bell.

[Are You Serious Jo]

The wild cats that our domestic cats developed from aren't social animals, so that is why they appear to do what they want, it's not that they are being arrogant as people generally believe, they just aren't wired to cooperate with a social partner.

[W Sibs]

I would give a try training a chicken... but I'm scared of them!

My dad has trained his cat (brother's ex cat) like a dog... Evil Ninja now knows how to play fetch, goes to toilet on command, and must sit and and wait for his food.

[corvus]

Training other animals has taught me flexibility and to treat each species as a completely different, not a variation of the previous species.

That's funny, because it has taught me kinda the opposite.

I learnt more about training dogs from living with a hare than from living with several very different dogs. There's no way in hell a hare is much like a dog, but it's the similarities that I found so valuable, not the differences. My hare became my litmus test for what I could reasonably expect of my dogs. If my hare didn't want any bar of something I would find myself questioning whether it was fair to do it to my dogs just because they didn't fly into a panic like he did. The answer was not always the same for the hare and the dogs, but asking the question was valuable. It did change my mind about some of the things I habitually did, and gave me a better understanding of the ways to take advantage of associative learning and the ways it causes trouble. It gave me a huge appreciation for desensitisation and counter-conditioning, and taught me to be more aware of my body, where my centre of gravity was, and how I shifted my weight. I learnt about pressure and to pay attention to my animal whilst applying it. It got me thinking about alternatives to hands-on methods and using my body to communicate. I developed habits about being aware of how cues are more than just one thing you say or one signal and got to being consistent about all my cues, right down to the way I walked or the sequence of doing things. That has all carried over to the way I work with my dogs and really broadened my mind.

[Are You Serious Jo]

If I treated the apes I've worked with like a hare I'd be in serious trouble. You might have learned about the general process of training that you didn't know from working with a hare, but once that is known to someone you really need to treat each species as a separate entity. The mechanics of training a scared prey animal is very different from that of a domestic animal and different again from most of the wild animals in captive situations. You need to work at species level and then deal with individual personality, taking into account motivation, reinforcers, previous history and conditioning goals, which are vastly different between species.

[Vickie]

What non-dogs have you trained

young humans

and what did it teach you?

that I am a much better dog trainer than kid trainer!

[poodlefan]

. What non-dogs have you trained and what did it teach you?

Horses. It taught me that training prey animals with strong flight responses is way different to training a predator with a social bond with me formed by living in my house.

It also taught me that force is mostly useless and to use my brain instead.

From a dog sports perspective, the insight into gait and movement learned on horses has been very useful too.

ETA: From Mr Joffrey (horse trainer) I learned that "end of lesson" has its place in rewarding a new behaviour or a new level of performance. If the animal gets it right, STOP training and give it a break. For too many animals, getting it right is "rewarded" with getting to do it again.. and again.

Edited June 2, 2010 by poodlefan

[m-j]

Horses (broken in and unbroken), cats (pet and feral), goats and a chook.

I have found the same as others but one of the other things I have also gained from teaching other animals is how important the size of successive approximations are and that going up in very small SA does absolutely no harm as long as you don't stay on a SA. They must be forever onward (if possible) for the easiest results, for both the actual training of the behaviour and the generalising. This is not to say that going back doesn't work/help.

that I am a much better dog trainer than kid trainer!

Me too.

cheers

M-J

[corvus]

If I treated the apes I've worked with like a hare I'd be in serious trouble.

Treating two species the same and appreciating their similarities are two wildly different things to me, and not necessarily related in the slightest. As you have noted, there are some massive differences even between two animals of the same species. I don't train my two dogs exactly the same way. As far as training my animals go, I think my domestic rabbit and one of my dogs have more in common than my domestic rabbit and my wild hare, or my two domestic dogs. I treat them all vastly differently, but I still learn a lot from the things they have in common.

Good point, m-j. Staying too long on one criteria and making quite small SAs was something I struggled with for a while. It's only since I got Erik, actually, that I started to see what I had been doing wrong. He moves fast and works for longer than a minute (thanks bunnies), so it was easier to see the progression at work.

[alpha bet]

Horses are great - they teach you to become really sensitive.

The hardest thing to train - try working with emus...... now thats really hard.... tiny little brain and almost no memory..... good thing is that if you make any mistakes they dont remember.

[Prydenjoy]

What non-dogs have you trained

young humans

and what did it teach you?

that I am a much better dog trainer than kid trainer!

I totally understand where you're coming from

[Prydenjoy]

I did a little bit of training with my cat, but found training the dogs much more rewarding so the cat kept getting neglected

I'd love to train dolphins or seals, that would be really cool

[Staff'n'Toller]

In a specific training sense I've worked with young pigs and rats.

[Cosmolo]

I've worked with horses and having my own again recently reminded me of a few differences i had forgotten about! I'd love to do some stuff with big cats- that would be awesome.