Are chickens colorblind?

[tntchix]

Do you have a link?

Ah - but it has been done, and successfully - on the "Private live of a Chicken" they did an experiment in which a hen had been conditioned to eat out of a dish of one color ( I think it was the yellow one) - she was then placed on one side of a netting and her chicks on the other. The chicks and hen were both given two dishes - one yellow and one of a different (but the same on both sides of net) color. The chicks were eating from the wrong color dish and they filmed the hen working VERY hard to communicate to her chicks that they needed to eat from the other colored dish. The dishes were identical in all ways but color.

Interesting. In my own experience I have been attacked by rooster when wearing red either shoes or shirt, and only those. I was trained quickly.

Do you have a link?

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

- it's around the 50 minute mark that they do the color thing - but the whole thing is SO worth watching.

 

[tntchix]

- it's around the 50 minute mark that they do the color thing - but the whole thing is SO worth watching.

Thanks, now I will be off to watching.

 

[Tallie]

I learned how NOT colorblind they were the other day, I painted my fingernails red and then went to change out the water in the brooder and they all ran over and started biting me which they never do.

 

[nikki5201]

That is amazing. then can chickens

pick on a certain colored chickens??

 

[lazy gardener]

I've seen color preference in my flock, where birds of a specific breed, and those of similar coloring will hang out together. This is not always the case, but often enough that I don't think it's coincidence. Even more so than the color thing, chickens know other chickens. And just like on a school play ground, for one reason or an other, some kids just end up at the bottom of the pecking order. I've heard of a broody hen rejecting chicks of a certain color.

 

[reenaldo]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this- but we're battling egg eating issues. We did the mustard egg thing & it seems to have helped, as we are getting a good number of eggs, but it seems as though they are now only eating the green eggs. We only have one green egg layer so we haven't been able to get one to blow out & put mustard in it. Any suggestions?