Training Chickens For Extensive Handling - Resources?

[TokoBird]

I’m looking for resources/guides on SPECIFIC steps I can do, to train my young chickens to be EXTREMELY docile for extensive handling.

If you have any links to good guides, or book recommendations, I’d appreciate it

I want to be able to:

• Manually extend their wings to the full length
• Pick them up
• Flip them over
• Hold their head still for a moment
• Examine their keel and vent
• Measure & examine pretty much any part of them without a lot of flapping and squawking.

Unfortunately I cannot keep them in the house, and I work full-time. During weekdays I’m limited to about 30 mins in the morning, and a few hours in the evening. So – I want to have specific goals and techniques in mind, so that the little time I’m able to spend working with them each day is used productively.

Should I isolate them to work on-on-one like I'd do with a horse or a dog? They get so distressed and distracted when separated from the others, but it's difficult to keep 1 chicken focused on me when the other girls found something fun to peck at.
I can train a dog or a horse for show, no problem. I even trained my cats!
...but my chickens are so tiny and delicate. When I touch them and they chirp in alarm, I'm worried I somehow hurt them.

I'm putting this in the 'Exhibition' forum because I've seen how docile some of those chickens are, to being manhandled and posed on a table for judges. Y'all must know something about this. LMK if there's a better place to ask.

 

[Amer]

I'd recommend you just train yourself to handle the birds with confidence. I am a poultry fair judge and I have to do this with all the birds and I don't believe all of them have been trained, however, I don't have too many problems with flapping and squawking. Just handle them enough that you can firmly and confidently handle them: control the legs and wings at all times and you should be good.

 

[TokoBird]

I'd recommend you just train yourself to handle the birds with confidence. I am a poultry fair judge and I have to do this with all the birds and I don't believe all of them have been trained, however, I don't have too many problems with flapping and squawking. Just handle them enough that you can firmly and confidently handle them: control the legs and wings at all times and you should be good.

Thank you for the advice,
my wariness is mostly because they’re still small. I can pick adult chickens without an issue.

I am ABLE to grab and manipulate them to check their health despite their squirming and screaming. I had to do so many times for 1 particular chick who kept getting pasty butt.


However, I’d prefer to have a bird that calmly plays along, and doesn’t try to wriggle away in alarm when I loosen my grip.

Like a budgie or falcon that allows it’s handler to spread its wing without even trying to bite their finger. There’s gotta be bird training for that.


One thing that’s making me unsure about my own knowledge is:

In general, it’s easy to coax mammals to allow someone to touch their back or ribs, but will be uneasy and move away you touch their face, paws/hooves/feet & tail when they don’t trust you.

….But my chickens allow me to handle their toes, touch their beak, neck and tail with no issue, but get REALLY alarmed about touching their wings or back.

So what else do birds have flip-flopped that would make them distrust me, even though it would be calming on a mammal?

 

[SourRoses]

I'm not an expert on this... but I am trying to work with some chicks I hatched, as they may eventually go on to a girl who wants to show in 4H.
The timing is uncertain so it may be their offspring, but in any case I'm trying to keep them tamer than I would usually bother with.

For most of my chickens, including multiple batches of offspring per year, I've found proximity without handling to be good for making them calm in the presence of humans. Not always catchable or handleable. That seems to depend on their own personality more than anything else.
Most important, chicks I spent more time looking at in the incubator seem to imprint, somewhat. I say this because they have favorable (curious) reactions when seeing my face, and less tendency to panic at sudden movements.

So with these chicks, I'm testing my theory that some Natural Horsemanship methods (*) might be applicable... since both are prey species and social species, important distinctions when it comes to animal psychology.

* The moment pressure (of any kind) is released is the learning moment. Whatever they were doing in that moment is what will be reinforced.
So if I'm handling them, when they try to relax I let them go. Later that can shift down to only letting go of problem areas, but at first the reward should be large.

If they are panicking, running away, pressure should not be released. It's best to avoid panics altogether, of course, but if it occurs I don't release the pressure of my effort ... Note: Pressure can be more than physical. In training, a focus on the animal can be a pressure. Eye contact, closing distance in body space, and so forth.

These chicks, I am working with on closing body space without stress. So I put my hand in their brooder, from almost the same level (never above) and approach their chests or beak with my hand in a level, not pecking attitude. Of course I could already pet them since they imprinted well... but what I'm looking for is their remaining calm at all times when my hand approaches. When they stay very calm I take my hand away as reinforcement, and when they close the final distance to peck at my fingers or hover under my hand for warmth, then I pet or just touch them. I hope I wrote that in a way that makes sense.

Sometimes with horses, the traditional training methods make people think a lesson is learned when you can complete the task. Say, getting a bridle on. So they consider the horse trained and then the horse progressively gets worse about getting the bridle on, and then people start to fight them, maybe bribe them, and soon only one person can bridle the horse because of all the custom tricks to working around their resistance. When really, resistance starts as fear, and the best way to teach a horse to bridle nicely permanently is to break the whole process down into tiny pieces and make sure they are calm and confident about each step. Are they comfortable with the leather straps in different facial regions? Are they okay with the sound of buckles, or do they show signs of tension? Are they okay with human hands behind their ears? So on, and so forth. In Natural Horsemanship, each element is approached separately regardless of the extra time it takes. And each time the horse relaxes when they hadn't before is a "try" that gets rewarded by a release of pressure (application of the bridle in that area, or human hands retreating) and big improvements are rewarded by the end of that bridling session. The timing of the try and the release is essential, so the handler has to be paying a lot of attention to the horse and stay fully ready to respond.

Sorry, I'm prattling on, but this is how I'm trying to work with these chicks. When they jump onto my hand, I use the other to cover them (lightly restraining) with the area between my thumb and pointer finger open around their necks. Goal being to apply a minimum of pressure and nothing uncomfortable. At first when they were tiny they loved it as a source of warmth and mommy feelings... but as they grow into the fourth week they don't like it so much. So I hold my hand in the same open restraining position and wait them out when they try to escape. As soon as they calm a little, I let them free.

I can't say if this method will work at all on bird brains, only that I'm trying it

 

[NatJ]

In my experience, chickens get used to anything that happens regularly.

So I would just pick each one up, gently go through as much as you can of the things you want to do, then put the chicken down. Pick up the next chicken...

If you have enough time to do each one every day, or even twice a day, that will probably help. Otherwise I would go through the chickens in some kind of order, so they each get handled with the same frequency.

From your list, I would probably start by picking up a chicken and holding it in a supported position until it settles down and stops struggling. Then turn it this way and that so you can see front, back, left and right sides. Then try angling up and down to see head and vent. Then try to extend wings, look more closely at the vent, handle and measure any other part. That order is based on what I expect the chicken to tolerate most easily, working toward the things that will be more difficult. If the chicken starts struggling, just hold it until it calms down again. Depending on how the chicken acts, I might not get through the whole list the first time with each chicken, but would just start again from the beginning the next time.

I have found that the way I act can make a big difference too. So handling chickens every day will be good practice for you too. Sometimes a tiny change in how you hold the bird will make a giant change in how the bird reacts. I'm guessing it is partly determined by whether the bird feels like it is falling, or feels like it might be able to get away, or feels securely held.

I'd recommend you just train yourself to handle the birds with confidence. I am a poultry fair judge and I have to do this with all the birds and I don't believe all of them have been trained, however, I don't have too many problems with flapping and squawking. Just handle them enough that you can firmly and confidently handle them: control the legs and wings at all times and you should be good.

I have noticed the same thing, although not in the context of poultry shows. I can usually pick up someone else's chicken, that has never seen me before, and handle it without too much fuss. Of course some chickens are exceptions, but the skill of the person seems to make most of the difference for most chickens.

During weekdays I’m limited to about 30 mins in the morning, and a few hours in the evening. So – I want to have specific goals and techniques in mind, so that the little time I’m able to spend working with them each day is used productively.

I'm betting 5 minutes per day, per chicken, will give you good results within a few weeks. For 8 chickens, that would be 40 minutes each day.

Should I isolate them to work on-on-one like I'd do with a horse or a dog? They get so distressed and distracted when separated from the others, but it's difficult to keep 1 chicken focused on me when the other girls found something fun to peck at.

Do you care if the chicken is focused on you? Or do you just want it to tolerate handling and not freak out?

 

[TokoBird]

Do you care if the chicken is focused on you? Or do you just want it to tolerate handling and not freak out?

The second one.
So far y’all have given some good advice - I’m already planning on putting it to use

 

[NatJ]

The second one.
So far y’all have given some good advice - I’m already planning on putting it to use

In that case, I would not bother trying to take a chicken away from the flock for training, if you just want it to accept handling, and don't actually care what the chicken is focusing on.