Chicken Obedience Training

[Boonie Stomper]

School is in session for my 3 students. Meet Missy, Dasher and Donner.

Top to bottom respectively.
Missy is oldest but very submissive. Dasher is so fast she almost always gets Missy"s goodies, even from her mouth, before she can eat it. Donner is relatively slower and dumber than the other two but makes up for it in size and fearlessness.

They all will take strips of deli meat or bread from my hand and all usually run for me at snack time (above photos were after a training round).

The objective today was using names to give goodies to the named individual exclusively. If it was intercepted the named one got another offering.
So far it seems to be working but how long should they retain what they learn?

 

[Brahma27]

Wow you've really trained your chickens!

 

[Brahma Chicken5000]

I don’t know how long they’ll retain what they learned, but I can tell you that if you give a chicken a name and call it by name it will learn it’s name and come when called. My girls always ran up to greet me regardless if I had food or not. They are very smart animals. With my new flock of chickens this March I’m going to try and train my sebrights to hop onto my arm when told to.

 

[Brahma27]

Well I'd say they'll probably retain what they learned as long as you keep having them use it

 

[Boonie Stomper]

At the time the above photos were taken all had eaten and gotten comfy awhile before the pop quiz. I called Missy. She and only she came, with obvious reluctance. None was eager for additional meat snacks at this point. Go figure...

I hope it wasn't counter productive of me to just toss them in the grass and leave.

 

[theoldchick]

Chickens are so trainable. They are fun to work with and very food motivated. Just like me!

 

[Brahma Chicken5000]

Chickens are so trainable. They are fun to work with and very food motivated. Just like me!

 

[JaeG]

Chickens are birds and birds are smart! They have been found capable of deception, self control, and they have a sense of themselves as an individual (that's why the pecking order works). Once trained I think they'll retain that knowledge as long as they have a reason to use it.

 

[Boonie Stomper]

Chickens are birds and birds are smart! They have been found capable of deception, self control, and they have a sense of themselves as an individual (that's why the pecking order works). Once trained I think they'll retain that knowledge as long as they have a reason to use it.

They definitely have unique dispositions. I am hoping to squelch some and encourage development of other behaviors.
Like no taking food from others mouth or biting my flesh. Like prompt correct response is good and gets rewards.

 

[JaeG]

Look what I just found for you (looking for information on something completely different):
https://www.chickenheavenonearth.com/can-chickens-learn-names-chicken-intelligence.html