training chickens for voluntary flight

[centrarchid]

I am training some young chickens (presently 3 weeks old) to make voluntary flights on que to land on my arm. Presently I am using meal worms as the enticement / reward. Flights which can be repeated every minute or so are now 8 to 10 feet horizontal from a standing position. Goal is to have much longer distance flights by same birds as adults.

This may seem a bit extreme but wanting distance to be more than a couple hundred feet (horizontal) with at least some gliding. Birds of this strain can easily beat 300 feet and land in a tree when flushed but where they end up is not realiable and I do not want to chase them down afterwards which can get tiresome for me and is hard on birds. I really want them to fly to me.

Anyone try something silly like this?

Ultimately I want to film this from multiple angles.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

All my chickens know their individual names (they are 8 months old). Whenever I hand out treats I make sure to say the name of the bird I'm giving the treat to just before it eats it. I make sure all the birds get roughly equal exposure to their names. Early on though, I couldn't tell my two BOs apart and I couldn't work with them until they were several months old. It's great when I want to get one bird's attention without alerting all the other birds. That's useful when I'm plucking hornworms out of the garden and I want to give it to one bird without the other's seeing and mobbing that bird. Of course all this is rather easy with just 6 birds.

 

[centrarchid]

Something I noticed while uploading video to YouTube is that Eduardo got all excited and ran over to camcorder every time part where he started to eat played. When he gets into the mealworm cup he makes a particular sound that I think is "tidbitting" that gets his siblings to come a running. He may not recognize his own voice. I might play simillar trick when prepping him for startling into flight. First have him listen to cackle for ground predator then play escape flight cackle when I want him to launch.

 

[BrewedInNh]

Sounds very amusing.

What breed are your birds?

One of our production reds likes to fly up to my shoulder. I didn't train her to do this, she ambushed me the first couple times until I got trained to act like a landing pad.

 

[centrarchid]

I am quite serious. We practice every evening for about 15 minutes. Chicks (n = 2) in training are American Games. I just got some red jungle fowl chicks from Cackle Hatchery this morning which will begin training in two weeks. I am not familiar with trainability of such nearly wild birds. As I understand, thier temperment similar to leghorns so they may prove too flighty.

My American Dom chicks do the ambush thing as well. Especially when I stand in one place too long or sit in lawn chair while working on computer. Seems like same thing they do to their mom when she stops for a bit.

 

[BrewedInNh]

I have no doubt of your serious intent, and didn't mean to make light of your efforts. I think any enjoyable attention (to the birds) is great. I'm sure they love it. I used to train pups for a breeder, and although it seemed like tedious, repetative work to us the pups loved the attention.

One of the reasons we got chickens is because we find them very amusing to watch. A bird trained to perform on cue sounds even better. I hope you're completely successful. Maybe we'll get to see it on YouTube?

 

[centrarchid]

You tube is likely destination for a video clip. Ultimately want very long flight in soccer fields where distance, flight time and speed to be accurately determined. Might even try for spot in local paper if birds do not chicken out.

They definantly like what is going on now. I am trying to train them to come when I call their name. So far they do not know respective names but already they do not fly out of brooder until I start talking. Otherwise they almost ignore me.

When they get full, they simply fall asleep on me.

 

[tuesdays chicks]

I think I understand why you want to do it but why do you need the distance? my girls come running when I call them anyway and yes they do fly to me but they dont land on me and they fly because its faster then running.

 

[centrarchid]

Doing this to demonstrate flight potential of at least some breeds is more than generally believed. Some folks I have communicated with deny flight capacity observations I reported. Also want use same birds in class room as teaching tools. landing on me gives control needed in such an environment.

Flight definantly faster but energetically costly. Longer distances they cheat by running. Chickens like to cheat.

 

[tuesdays chicks]

I thought chickens didn't fly much because they are actually too heavy for their wings my andalusian flys very well and so does my campine you should try those breeds in your test.