How do you teach your chickens not to peck you????

[lightchick]

I have eight 8 weeks old chicks. 4 are roosters and 4 are pullets (not sure about my Silkie). Whenever they peck at something on me or take treats from my hands it REALLY hurts. If I have a raisin or something to give to them they jump all over me and nearly take my fingers off (and their claws are getting very sharp so those hurt too)!
Is there any way to teach them not to be so rough??? Thanks so much!

EDIT: Otherwise they are really friendly!

 

[6of6chicks]

This is probably going to sound really stupid to the experienced folks, but I'm brand new to chickens, so I could only go by what I know and that's dogs training. When puppies mouth too hard one of the ways to get them to stop is to shriek really loudly (REALLY loud, ear-piercing shrieks) and take your hand away (remove attention). It's the same screech littermates use when someone is playing too rough. The flip side is they get praised & petted galore when they keep their mouths in check. Takes patience and a lot of repetition, but it works.

Tried the screech technique on the chicks - surprise, surprise, nothing. (What?? Birds and dogs are different??

) But when I added a gentle thump to the beak - that got their attention. And I mean REALLY gentle - just enough to startle them. Their little faces were so shocked, lol! They all had to go through their own thumping a few times, but they actually got the message faster than my dogs usually do. When hand feeding if someone pecked too hard I would shriek and immediately take my hand (and food) away, then wait for them to calm down before I gave it back.

Maybe I'm an idiot, but no-one has pecked me hard enough to hurt in weeks. Occasional test pecks that I barely feel, yes, but nothing like what it was. Every few days someone needs a reminder "shriek," but that's all it takes to re-set the whole flock. Might be a strange way to go about it, but hey, it worked!

 

[lightchick]

Thanks!

 

[Bill Matthews]

Chickens are like teenagers and politicians......Stop them from doing something naughty and they will be doing it again in a few days, hours, weeks....Very short attention spans and severely underdeveloped intellectual powers!....