where do i learn chicken language?

[Fowlman]

hey, im researching chickens a lot and was wondering where i could learn their little "24-30 sentence language. do you know of a site?

 

[rooster-red]

Don't know, I was always taught that its bad to use fowl language.

 

[Fowlman]

good one

 

[tiki244]

Do you have chickens? If you do then listen to them and you will understand after a while. Hawk is "HAWK"

Whent he roo gets excited for the hens to come eat something its a lot of little ecxited come and get it noises.

There are some videos on You Tube that show some of them.

 

[rooster-red]

Quote:
Around here we call that noise "gooking"
Sounds like he is saying "gook, gook, gook"

 

[Fowlman]

so do you know of any site that has it?

 

[ivan3]

Deciphering the lingo is a matter of observing and listening to your flock (I've learned to tell the difference between our roo's `tidbitting' `gook' call "seriously, girls, there's food here!" From his `tidbitting' call - rrrrrrr rrrrr, i.e., "There's really no food here, but come hither anyway because I'm gonna jump your bones..."). But this is my favorite bit of research on Red Jungle Fowl vocalizations and meaning (the `unchained' primordial clucker).

http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v089n03/p0510-p0524.pdf

ed: you might need to download several times to get the entire PDF to save to your files

 

[supdude]

Quote:
haha, how long were you saving that up?

 

[Wildsky]

My roo likes to make the "tidbit" call when the hens are following the humans around. Cracks me up - he even PRETENDS to be looking at something in the dirt! DORK!

My roo makes an almost BOK BOK noise but not the same as the hens... its hard to spell out sounds!

He also has a "what the HECK" call, when one of the hens decides to FLY across the yard.

My favorite is his little BIK BIK BIK when we've walked PAST him, he'll wait till we're PAST and our backs are to him, then he has to have his say!

 

[ivan3]

I've watched our roo mix up his `come hither' food call with his `this is a good place to nest `purr', then the hens get leary and keep pecking around at distance.

One of the reasons I still find these guys and gals so fascinating is their range of vocalizations, to quote from the article I linked to above:

"Different vocal signals can be recognized by their sonograms and by the common element in the various situations in which a signal is given. Twenty-four vocal signals are described but because of intergradation between some signals and between different situations no absolute size of vocal repertoire can be fixed."

Ya just never know exactly what they'll say next...