well, what happened with this little guy is that I threw him a little piece of jalapeño and he saw it, made a little click click sound while bobbing his head. It wasn't the alert call...I could kind of tell he was tid-bitting, but I've never actually seen it before, so wanted to confirm. It isn't as obvious as when a pullet squats for the first time.
Yes, that's the current thinking in the scientific community.
I'm not sure if the fake tid-bitting is in any way associated with true tid-bitting. We humans might just mistake it for the same or similar behavior. I think it is a completely separate behavior with completely separate sounds, actions and motives, and no chicken confuses the two behaviors.
This is almost the most important post that answers the OP. A rooster or hen can be bad or good (and needs to be dealt with either way) but we must remember that certain things do irritate. It might be as simple as a yellow line. I have had a similar experience with a rooster not feeling great about a piece of clothing. Changing made all the difference. Darn critics. LOL
Just find someone that does the same and you are in nice rooster business. Hope this helps. I'm a big baby when it comes to my chickens, I sold four 6 week little ones today and just cried about them. But I can't and won't tolerate meanness and bullying. Not in people or chickens. You are doing the right thing.
All my studying of Applied Behavior Analysis came from animal trainers and a professor of psychology who taught a class geared to animal training.
In a nutshell, Applied Behavior Analysis analyses/quantifies/records the whole sequence of a behavior, from the Antecedent (what triggers the behavior), the Behavior itself, and the Consequence (to the leaner) of the behavior. The Consequences either increase, decrease, or don't influence the behavior being continued.
I have heard of this system before. It helps to break incidents down to review them and try to understand them but systems like this don't really work when applied to complicated behaviors for which the animal receives no benefit within its lifetime, or which lack any antecedent beyond mental imbalance, and they presume mental health or instinctive soundness in the animal, which many domestic animals are bereft of.
Derangement in domestic animals is pretty common especially in those intensively farmed and which have experienced complete destruction or severe alteration of the natural lifestyle and natural family/social unit for generation after generation since the advent of modern farming in some cases. We're often still evaluating them along wild fowl lines, with a strong presumption of their 'correctness' as they are, however they are, but they are long and far removed from their ancestral state and it's right for us to both demand more and still expect less in the average, if that even makes sense. Domestic poultry have achieved greater standards than the average bird is held to and us getting too soft and forgiving on detrimental individuals can drag the average down and waste the hard-won domesticity that our own ancestors worked at.
So, from an ABA point of view, looking at my rooster attacking, it would look something like this:
Antecedant: My proximity or my making a loud noise by calling dogs, whistling for parrots or banging anything.
Behavior: Fake Tid-bitting, full on attack, rushing when my back is turned.
Consequence: Everything from me grabbing a light bamboo pole, chasing him and whacking him with it, walking into him, catching him and doing the usual recommended things.
Then the question is, what is the frequencey and intensity of the behavior (attacking)? Well, it has escalated, so I can see from my own simple analysis that my increasing aggression simply doesn't work and might even be making the problem worse, so I should simply stop.
I would suspect that it's more like this:
Antecedent: rooster views himself as the natural alpha and humans as inferior opponents to be subjugated or killed. Humans challenge this when they intrude into his territory
Behavior: escalating pre-attack behavior patterns including fake tid-bitting, culminating in outright attacking
Consequence: human refuses to accept subordinate position and retaliates, rooster's alpha status is thereby completely challenged by subordinate, due to both human restraint and incorrect perception of his own magnitude/inherent and unassailable superiority (lol) rooster's aggression only escalates as he seeks to kill the inferior...
Or it may be that he is simply so intensely aggravated by your presence that he is rabidly opposed to it, and it's not so much a perception of his alpha status that drives him so much as absolute intolerance of your proximity and even death is better than letting you persist. Maybe he just likes to fight and wants to kill, some are like that. I'd still bet on this being more alpha-centric though.
I know that relegates the antecedent to being you merely existing, not what you're actually doing, but with this sort of rooster your existence is often enough of an antecedent, as there is no right or wrong behavior you can do to avoid or trigger his wrath. Your rooster might be 'triggered' by actions, perhaps, but plenty aren't, at least nothing discernible, it's all in their heads, and the fact that many launch their very first attacks from behind, without provocation or warning, suggests it's got very little to do with perceiving you as either a predator, fellow chicken, or anything but a future victim. It's very specific behavior and shows no respect nor fear.
I've seen the same sort of behavior in turkeys who inherited it. At that stage I was still trying to train it out of animals so I was buying animals from family lines I knew were human aggressive, because I thought surely nurture should triumph over nature with enough of them to be worthwhile. Long story short, I was wrong.
I got them as tiny chicks from a couple who believed it was some natural part of being a turkey to attack a human whenever they turned their back. They thought it was just some instinct that belonged to the species. It was a strong trait in the parents, the offspring showed subtle warning signs, and as with some aggressive roosters it also got much stronger around 2 years old, escalating into full on attack whenever a human turned their back. The first few times that I noticed the toms rushing after me as I left the cage, I didn't think much of it but did take note. Soon it escalated to the toms who had never feared me staying away from me when I was in their pen. They'd never been abused. Soon enough I noticed them starting to approach every time my back was turned but turning away and stopping when I turned back. One day, I stood in the pen turning away, turning towards, and repeating that, and they acted like I was some sort of magnet and so were they, as though they were responding to the poles... Turn away, they spin like clockwork pieces on the spot and start running towards my back. Turn towards, they spin again and walk the other way. Turn my back, and instantly they about-face and rush for my back. And repeat. We repeated that about a dozen times. Some animals just make it so easy to make them into dinner. I did try to train it out of them but that was a waste of time.
I was once given a Leghorn rooster who fought repeatedly with one of my dominant roosters, would not accept defeat and obviously would have continued to the death if I hadn't separated them. Both 'played by gentlemans' rules' (lol) meaning neither used their spurs or tried to maim one another. Every time my rooster quickly defeated his opponent he would stand around or walk off, while the leghorn lay there gasping until he got his breath back, but then the leghorn would hurry over to my roo to battle again. He couldn't win, never came close, but couldn't stop. He was given every opportunity to pull his head in and just join the flock, but kept making a beeline for that rooster. Because neither was being damaging, just booting one another as the usual dominance fight goes, I didn't intervene, just supervised, expecting the leghorn would get the idea sooner or later.
Eventually both were so out of breath they were weak, the leghorn looked like his heart might fail, they'd had many dozens of battles in nonstop succession and I realized this leghorn rooster was going to go till he died, so I removed him. Even during this prolonged series of battles they didn't wound one another, they battled like socially balanced and sound roosters do, except the leghorn seemed to either lack, or refuse to employ, any submissive behaviors or mental patterns, so social harmony could not resume. He couldn't win but either wouldn't or couldn't accept that.
Studies in dogs, as Temple Grandin has referenced in one of her books, show the more infantile breeds like 'toy' dogs, or any that look more like puppies than primitive type dogs even as adults, have more puppylike mentalities and lack at least one, several or even all of the normal submissive behaviors domestic dogs that look more primitive as well as wild dogs and wolves etc possess, so they can cause confrontations to the death because they cannot submit and cannot understand submission when they see it; also they appear to have overweening perceptions of their own status, because they are adult dogs stuck in often infantile mindsets. Something similar may be the case with some roosters.
Punishments are things that decrease a behavior. If they don't decrease the behavior, then they are just abuse. That's what I was always taught. I was also taught that if you were going to use something like punishment, you had better make it so severe that the animal would never ever do that behavior again. Think of how quickly and thoroughly a child leans to never touch a red hot stove element after one touch.
So basically, you were taught to gamble on punishment working and if the gamble doesn't pay off you wear the 'abuser' label. Nice. :/ I'm not sure your teachers are up to date on what's legal and ethical these days, lol! I'm joking, I know that's just one of the accepted methods. We're all learning our way to managing animals better, and quite often even the professionals don't have an answer. Not to throw dirt at your teachers, it's a very complicated and confused subject, what works for one doesn't even work for most it seems when it comes to animal training or classifying animal behavior.
I think the punishment theory you were taught might better be described as conditioning because if I understand it right, it's an attempt to mimic the natural punishment/consequences that reinforce or negatively 'reinforce' any action such as occurs in the wild as well as in domesticity. (?)
The problem with the idea of punishment and reward being what controls the increase or decrease of a given behavior is that it doesn't account for all the motivations behind that behavior, or it assumes they are all logical. Sometimes psychosis is the motivation and trying to deal with that logically isn't going to work because it's entirely illogical. Sometimes there is simply no behavior or reaction that is going to decrease the behavior.
The natural world conditions us to avoid certain things, but when it comes to social interactions, there's far more questioning and testing and repeat attempts to change the 'reigning paradigm' to suit the individual and so forth, because social 'rules' are fluid and often change between individuals, and between the same individuals at different times, in different circumstances, etc, whereas fire always burns no matter what; social rules are nowhere near as clear cut as that so aggression in response to aggression rarely achieves the same kind of complete, lifelong avoidance as getting burned does.. Even with fire we get blase and familiarity breeds contempt, at least for some. At best you may get a temporary reprieve while the animal waits for you to get a bit older or more infirm, as you see with a flock of sheep with young rams awaiting the older rams' age related weakness or injury or illness to seize dominance. They may have fought when they first felt like they were strong enough to beat the older rams, but after losing they accept their place and bide their time. At no point do they permanently accept subordinate positions for life, when the opportunity arises they will act immediately. They are socially upwards motivated and willing to risk life and limb to satisfy that urge. You see the same thing with roosters but normal roosters never include humans in the flock hierarchy like another chicken, they respect you without you having to fight, be healthy, etc.
We don't expect to get hotter than fire nor immune to it, so we don't tend to keep questioning it, but the rooster who thinks he's stronger than you doesn't respect you without question. He has 'questioned' or tested your authority, assuming he's that mentally clear and not just deranged, and he's discovered he doesn't die for attacking you. He remains with the flock, you go away. Even separating him isn't likely to change it because he sounds like a very aggressive individual who believes he's the true alpha without due cause which is delusional and should have been dispelled by the fights you've had with him. If he thinks you're an automatic inferior who will never belong in alpha status, as his behavior suggests, he expects he's going to be able to dominate you because alphas always dominate subordinates, it's the natural order. At no point is your retaliation going to change his askew and unrealistic perception of both you and himself, this isn't a fight to see who's alpha because he's already decided that; this is an alpha trying to get rid of what he perceives to be an inferior animal.
Most hyper-aggressive animals, male or female, assume they are alpha despite being so socially malignant that in the wild they would fail to pass on their genes (for the most part), as most of these hyperaggressives lack decent parental and pair instinct, so the roosters are often also abusive to the hens and the hens to the chicks. We bred the hyperaggression into them, it's not the ancestral type; it's excessive, unrestrained and abnormal. Mentally abnormal animals are scorned by normal mates in the wild, but in domesticity they're often accepted.
It's natural for social dynamics to change regularly throughout an animal's lifetime, for everyone's statuses to change, and for animals to watch their 'society' at all times to see if they need to change to cope better in the current social system with every little nuance of alteration that occurs. They're always ready to change social status. For this reason I don't think punishment/negative reinforcement or conditioning works for social behaviors the same way it does for extrasocial circumstances i.e. those with inanimate objects/entities where there are no ifs or buts or maybes, no 'one day when I'm stronger' and there's no dialogue to be had with the unquestionable and unchallengeable dangerous entity, i.e. fire.
He would learn to respect fire due to the consequences of disrespecting it but because you're a fellow animal he won't learn to respect you due to the consequences of disrespecting you, because there is a question there of whether he can make you submit/die, whereas there is no questioning and challenging the fire, and because he's not too intelligent (obviously) he doesn't realize you're potentially as dangerous as fire and could kill him instantly. It's a theory anyway... Personally I don't think he's all as mentally reasonable as that.
Of course, there are a whole host of negative side effects to punishment. They include but are not limited to increased aggression and avoidance behavior (I wish I had gotten that side effect!).
Yeah, totally agree with this... Punishments aren't really among any of the most effective training methods I know of, especially not with seriously aggressive animals and especially not with those that are aggressive due to perceived status rights being violated by the human, where the animal's belief in its superior status is not based on anything real, so trouncing it in a physical battle won't alter its behavior even though it got dominated and invalidated as the natural alpha. It's akin to some kind of neurosis, some rooster aggression is definitely a mental fault.
Socially balanced individuals are open to the idea that their opponent may be the superior one, and the battle is not to kill their opponent, but to find out which is the most worthy one, so to speak, and once that's achieved, they go their separate ways and respect one another, and one anothers' social status; just because one animal is subordinate does not make it a punching bag with no rights. The alpha doesn't keep attacking the subordinate and the subordinate certainly doesn't challenge the alpha again unless they've gotten stronger or smarter and now think they can take the alpha position. It's based on testing and measurable results, not an incontestable perception of absolute superiority which denies all evidence to the contrary as per your experiences with your rooster.
When I first had my rooster problems no one had any solutions except violence against the rooster. Perhaps I could have tried to train him to do a behavior that he couldn't attack me at the same time as doing the behavior, but in my opinion he was just too motivated to attack and that would have trumped any desire for a goody that he would have earned for doing a behavior.
Logic can lead to violence apparently being the answer, but that's only because logic itself is flawed because it depends on what we can quantify and we cannot quantify everything around us completely accurately, and in my experience violence is never the true answer, unless it's permanent, i.e. culling. I'm sure there are some who never attacked again after being attacked in return but I don't have any personal experiences that verify that so at the moment I don't consider violence the correct method in any situation.
I don't want to keep a violent animal for its whole lifetime, breeding it most likely (because I don't keep almost any nonbreeders except a few pets), hoping it never snaps again, wasting years of my life on that already proven risk, adding its almost guaranteed to be worthless genetics to my programs and then watching its descendants to see the trait surface again. With the abundance of great alternatives and the ease of keeping them I don't see the value in keeping animals that will only respect me if I abuse them.
About the pointlessness of trying to redirect him, I believe you're right, I'd bet it wouldn't have worked because he sounds quite bent/motivated to harm you, and either way if you'd started giving him treats to try to distract him, that would merely have added positive reinforcement. Chooks are quick to learn to do whatever gets the treats, they've trained many humans in the history of the species' domesticity.
I honestly think you are correct that it has a genetic basis. In the past, all roosters lived on farms with farmers and children running around. A nasty rooster would NOT have been tolerated. Now, breeding birds has become largely commercialized and temperament doesn't matter. Dr. Temple Grandin has written articles on how commercial breeding practices have allowed "rapist roosters" as she calls them to be used in a breeding program. They are not culled from a breeding program because of their rude behavior.
Temple Grandin has some interesting points of view, I've only just started looking into her work and at this rate she will leave a good legacy of better animal treatment behind her.
There are studies proving the genetic predisposition towards violence is very strong, in various species including chickens. If you were curious you could conduct your own breeding experiment using this rooster and try to breed out violent behavior, or even breed more in. Would be very dangerous though.
You've brought up some interesting points, Chooks4life.
Thanks, and best wishes with your future studies and your rooster. I also did some studying on ethology and animal training across species, philosophies and eras, as it's always fascinated me, and I've yet to find any body of work that is totally correct in application, it's a very complicated world and animals are more complicated than is already obvious.
