Smartest breed of chicken

[Amer]

Dominique bantams have always been my smartest.

 

[centrarchid]

I use to raise gamefowl for years and I raised rampuri asils for quite awhile and the rampuri were the smartest breed I ever came across

Mine are smarter than yours as you have not seen my games or anything close.

 

[varidgerunner]

Asils. Hands down. Way smarter than any strain of American Game, like comparing a border collie to a turnip. Yet American Games would be the same degree smarter than any other chicken breed.

 

[centrarchid]

Asils. Hands down. Way smarter than any strain of American Game, like comparing a border collie to a turnip. Yet American Games would be the same degree smarter than any other chicken breed.

Oh yeh. Show me what you got!

 

[OhZark Biddies]

Before you fella's start unzipping to get this smartest chicken breed whizzing contest officially started, let me introduce you to Carl (of mixed ancestry)...

He's the twelve time chicken chess champion....he can balance his check book... and he got a 600 on his SATs... not the best score admittedly, but he is a chicken after all.

 

[Biddybot]

I was once outsmarted by a tiny Old English Game hen. Here, in a nutshell, is what happened with her and why I consider this breed extremely intelligent as chickens go...

Henny wanted to raise chicks. Since I collected the eggs in the indoor nest boxes everyday, brooding inside wasn't an option for her and she collected a clutch of eggs outdoors instead to avoid my predations. I didn't even realize she'd done this until she didn't come in to roost one night, yet the next afternoon, when I fed scratch to the gang, there she suddenly was again, chowing down with the rest. Went for a long, long drink after that, took a dust bath--I was suspicious by that point--and sure enough, she wandered off afterwards and again didn't come in at night. I really didn't want any more bantams so the very next time I was home to feed scratch outdoors, I watched for her and eventually followed her back to her nest, which turned out to be under a thorny old low-growing quince shrub right up against the south-facing side of the house. A pretty good spot, really, but still...no more bantams! So I chased her off and took all the eggs away while she watched from a short distance away. Let's just say she was not a happy camper, although she didn't appear to bear me any grudge at the time...

About a month later, same story. Henny went missing one night, reappeared the next day to get some food and water. I gave her a few days to sort of suck her into the routine and then tried following her to her new outdoor nest. This time she led me into one of the two 'wild' islands in my front yard, patches of natural long grass, wild roses, bayberry, dogwood shrubs, etc, which are surrounded by mowed lawn. The island she snuck into was the bigger one and VERY brambly and I was cursing up a storm as I started looking for her and got scratched all to hell by all the roses. Worst of all was that not only was Henny tiny, but she was one of those varieties whose females are very brown-mottled and extremely well camouflaged...I just COULD not find her that first afternoon. Tried again the next day. Same deal. She came running when I called the flock in for scratch and got her food and a drink, dust-bathed and groomed a while, then sauntered back to the front yard and crawled into the wild island. And again, I couldn't find her! In fact, I was afraid of inadvertently stepping on her!

I tried for almost two weeks to find that hen and never did. Finally, I marked the date at which the clutch might hatch and resigned myself to seeing her show up on the lawn with a bunch of chicks round about that time or perhaps I'd hear them peeping beforehand and finally discover where her secret nest was hidden...

A day before Henny's clutch was due to hatch, I went to the end of my laneway, outside my fence, to get my mail (we still had individual mailboxes back then). While I was standing there, looking through the letters and such, I suddenly heard the unmistakable peep of a chick, and then another. Went searching, of course, and there, under the bridalwreath spirea RIGHT behind the mailbox was Henny on a nest, FULL of hatching eggs! What was amazing was that I'd walked within four feet of her everyday when I got the mail, but never once spotted her. But then I also wasn't looking for her there...I was convinced she was in the wild island on my front lawn! To appreciate her cleverness, not only did this hen lead me into the wrong overgrown area, but while I was busy searching, she then must have snuck out of the island on the other side, ran a good eighty feet down the strip of lawn bordering the chain link fence next to the road, and THEN slipped under the gate across the end of the laneway and into her nest behind the mailbox and next to the shrubby old ditch without me once seeing her or catching on. That to me shows a considerable amount of ability to learn from past mistakes and observation, not to mention a hefty dose of deviousness when it came to tricking the nasty, egg-stealing human!

Because the nest was outside the fence where any predator could come along and discover it now that the chicks, both hatched and unhatched, were peeping, I had no choice but to bring the whole family indoors and reset Henny in a proper broody pen. And Henny, throughout that disruption, never...moved. She just kept glaring at me as I first shifted the hatching clutch into a dog dish for transporting, then picked her up too. Settled instantly onto her new nest in the broody pen and never even stood up. By the next morning, every friggin' egg had hatched...fourteen of them!!! So much for not wanting any more bantams!

Anyway, that's my proof of why I think Old English Game bantams are sharp as whips and how one of them managed to outsmart me and get her way after all. The whole incident was pretty humbling, to be honest.

 

[Amer]

I was once outsmarted by a tiny Old English Game hen. Here, in a nutshell, is what happened with her and why I consider this breed extremely intelligent as chickens go...

Henny wanted to raise chicks. Since I collected the eggs in the indoor nest boxes everyday, brooding inside wasn't an option for her and she collected a clutch of eggs outdoors instead to avoid my predations. I didn't even realize she'd done this until she didn't come in to roost one night, yet the next afternoon, when I fed scratch to the gang, there she suddenly was again, chowing down with the rest. Went for a long, long drink after that, took a dust bath--I was suspicious by that point--and sure enough, she wandered off afterwards and again didn't come in at night. I really didn't want any more bantams so the very next time I was home to feed scratch outdoors, I watched for her and eventually followed her back to her nest, which turned out to be under a thorny old low-growing quince shrub right up against the south-facing side of the house. A pretty good spot, really, but still...no more bantams! So I chased her off and took all the eggs away while she watched from a short distance away. Let's just say she was not a happy camper, although she didn't appear to bear me any grudge at the time...

About a month later, same story. Henny went missing one night, reappeared the next day to get some food and water. I gave her a few days to sort of suck her into the routine and then tried following her to her new outdoor nest. This time she led me into one of the two 'wild' islands in my front yard, patches of natural long grass, wild roses, bayberry, dogwood shrubs, etc, which are surrounded by mowed lawn. The island she snuck into was the bigger one and VERY brambly and I was cursing up a storm as I started looking for her and got scratched all to hell by all the roses. Worst of all was that not only was Henny tiny, but she was one of those varieties whose females are very brown-mottled and extremely well camouflaged...I just COULD not find her that first afternoon. Tried again the next day. Same deal. She came running when I called the flock in for scratch and got her food and a drink, dust-bathed and groomed a while, then sauntered back to the front yard and crawled into the wild island. And again, I couldn't find her! In fact, I was afraid of inadvertently stepping on her!

I tried for almost two weeks to find that hen and never did. Finally, I marked the date at which the clutch might hatch and resigned myself to seeing her show up on the lawn with a bunch of chicks round about that time or perhaps I'd hear them peeping beforehand and finally discover where her secret nest was hidden...

A day before Henny's clutch was due to hatch, I went to the end of my laneway, outside my fence, to get my mail (we still had individual mailboxes back then). While I was standing there, looking through the letters and such, I suddenly heard the unmistakable peep of a chick, and then another. Went searching, of course, and there, under the bridalwreath spirea RIGHT behind the mailbox was Henny on a nest, FULL of hatching eggs! What was amazing was that I'd walked within four feet of her everyday when I got the mail, but never once spotted her. But then I also wasn't looking for her there...I was convinced she was in the wild island on my front lawn! To appreciate her cleverness, not only did this hen lead me into the wrong overgrown area, but while I was busy searching, she then must have snuck out of the island on the other side, ran a good eighty feet down the strip of lawn bordering the chain link fence next to the road, and THEN slipped under the gate across the end of the laneway and into her nest behind the mailbox and next to the shrubby old ditch without me once seeing her or catching on. That to me shows a considerable amount of ability to learn from past mistakes and observation, not to mention a hefty dose of deviousness when it came to tricking the nasty, egg-stealing human!

Because the nest was outside the fence where any predator could come along and discover it now that the chicks, both hatched and unhatched, were peeping, I had no choice but to bring the whole family indoors and reset Henny in a proper broody pen. And Henny, throughout that disruption, never...moved. She just kept glaring at me as I first shifted the hatching clutch into a dog dish for transporting, then picked her up too. Settled instantly onto her new nest in the broody pen and never even stood up. By the next morning, every friggin' egg had hatched...fourteen of them!!! So much for not wanting any more bantams!

Anyway, that's my proof of why I think Old English Game bantams are sharp as whips and how one of them managed to outsmart me and get her way after all. The whole incident was pretty humbling, to be honest.

Goodness!
My Dominique bantam kept me off her trail a while, but I was eventually able to follow her back to her nest.
I do give her kudos for using an old chick delivery box we had left in the shed though. She knew just how to use it!
She was pretty clever in catching food though, walking on the strip of gravel along the side of the road next to the long grass. For some reason, right there, they jump into her mouth!
And of course we also left the coop locked up (with a sitter) for a week because of a trip, not knowing she was sitting outside the coop. Those grasshoppers must have been how she got her protein!

 

[CarpCharacin]

How smart do you think chickens are compared to other animals, say dogs? I read that dogs have roughly the mental abilities of a 2.0 to 2.5 year old human child, so I was able to roughly extrapolate that a dog would have an IQ of approximately 12.5 to 15.625 compared to the average human adult.

 

[centrarchid]

How smart do you think chickens are compared to other animals, say dogs? I read that dogs have roughly the mental abilities of a 2.0 to 2.5 year old human child, so I was able to roughly extrapolate that a dog would have an IQ of approximately 12.5 to 15.625 compared to the average human adult.

I do not know how to quantify smarts, especially with animals that specialize on different activities. I do not know how one could even objectively compare chickens. We need to be looking things up for that.

 

[centrarchid]

How smart do you think chickens are compared to other animals, say dogs? I read that dogs have roughly the mental abilities of a 2.0 to 2.5 year old human child, so I was able to roughly extrapolate that a dog would have an IQ of approximately 12.5 to 15.625 compared to the average human adult.

Fellow fish geek I see.