Chicken!

The goal was to succesfully train the chicken to peck a target. Placement of Reward, Rate of Reinforcement, and Timing of the click are all key to getting this.

On top of all of that, there was the chicken. Some hadn't been handled at all, and were reluctant participants. Others, were uber smart chickens and very food motivated. Oh, and I should mention I had never actually touched a chicken before. I was a bit nervous about it. Kim however was a pro and was the first to grab her chicken out of the crate.

We were split into pairs, and each person had two chickens to rotate through.

Before the chickens came out we practiced our "click and delivery" - it is much harder than you'd think as you have to be careful not to spill any or the chickens will just eat off the ground.

The next step was to get the bird on the table, and relaxed. So we fed them from the cups. My black bird figured this out right away. My brown bird not so much.

Once the chicken was comfortable on the table we introdcued them to the target, and the click. We started shaping our chickens to peck the target. Kim had the most success out of all of us. After just a few turns she figured out that the target is what was earning her the food. She got to the point where we introduced a colored target (red) and the next step would have been to teach her discrimination between the colors. It was very interesting to see the chickens thinking about it. Kim's chicken was moving all over the table wherever the target went- she followed.

My own chickens didn't fair as well. My black chicken did figure it out at the end- but she was a total gawker, any noise or movement and she'd forget what she was doing. I joked that I got the Flatcoat of the Chicken world. :o) I had to lower my criteria back to basic each turn as she didn't seem to remember where we left off the turn before. So each turn was started with rewarding a look or head bob towards the target. But I was getting solid pecks at the end. My brown chicken ended up not even willing to take berries from me- never mind the chicken feed. She was a wash out. :o(

Kim's Brown Chicken

It was a pretty fun way to spend the afternoon. Donna showed us a video of Bob Bailey's about the history behind Operant Conditioning and it was neat to see the progression and how it was used. The actual training of the chickens was fun, and I am looking forward to going again. It really is a great way to fine tune your timing, and rate of reinforcement. I can see how it would benefit all clicker trainers as you really have to be super aware of what exactly you are rewarding. I was rewarding my chicken for being precise and careful- whereas Kim was getting frantic, target throwing, pecks. We had to get a replacement at one point because Kim's black chicken ripped it almost in half!

I will totally be up for going again- even though I smelled like a barn and had to have two showers to get rid of the chicken smell... :o)