Course III - Chaining - Day 4

Today I started with red light discrimination. I thought that my chickens would be very hungry and acting like Border Collies again so I wanted to have them in a calm task first before going to the apparatus. And I was right. They were so hungry and active that waiting that light to go on was really big task for them. They did not want to wait that light to go on. They just kept banging their targets even the red light was not on. I felt that we did not progress at all. I wonder what would they have been doing if I had taken them to the apparatus first. They would have been probably flying from one platform to another instead of running. Good thing that I started with red light task.

I put the red light discrimination aside for a while and started the lifting of straw task with both my chickens. They both were very good at this, but I could not get them to move the straw to another place. I started to feed them to the way I wanted them to lift, but it did not help much. Every time they would hear the click, they would drop down the straw. But at least I could get them lifting that straw without killing it like they did for the poor stuffed koala bear and rubber frog yesterday. In the afternoon I decided to move the chickens to the platform to their correct place to do the lifting task. I still tried to get the chickens to lift to the correct place by placing the food in that direction that I wanted them to drop the straw. And I finally understood to click for longer holding so I was getting more lifting behavior, but I was not quite there yet. Then Mr. Bailey came to see how our table was doing and saw me training my chickens to this task. He told me that treat the chicken from higher up so the chicken would have to lift the item higher up and that would eventually develop to longer lifting and chicken would carry the straw longer.

So I changed my behavior to this and it worked. We rehearsed two long sessions with both of my chickens in same place in the platform and stood next to them in the end of the table, right next to the apparatus. Boy, was I stupid or what! Of course the chickens learned that the food would come to that exact position when I am standing there. The third session when we practiced the lifting on the platform I finally realized that I have to move myself to the position that I was going to be in the evaluation. So I moved to stand next to apparatus in middle of it. I must have left my brains home or something - both chickens went completely confused and could not perform any lifting since I was standing in wrong place. I had to take a break from training and think what went wrong. Then I figured out what was wrong. I had moved too far from the chicken right away. I should have moved first only little bit from the chicken and then gradually fade myself out of chicken's stimulus picture. This did not take too long to repair. Within next few round I was almoust half away from the place I was going to stand in the evaluation. Mr. Bailey came later by the table and said: "Anna that carrying is looking good." So I must have been doing something right anyway.

But a new problem occurred. The chickens had started to take backwards steps. The behavior was now that chicken took the straw, lifted it, took two steps backwards and dropped the straw there. I tried to fix this problem by treating the chickens forward, but that did not work anymore. There had been already too many reinforcements with the backwards steps. So I decided not to mind this. But since the chickens took backward steps they did not drop the straw from the platform any more. They had started to come little bit more towards me since I was now standing in front of the apparatus. This is where I left my chickens today and I have to fix this problem tomorrow, I did not have anymore time for this today.

I had calculated that I would have the red light tasks ready by noon today, but since my chickens were so crazy I did not get that task ready yet. Nevertheless I knew that I just had to start practicing the third task with my top chicken if I was going to have her play piano. So right before the lunch I got her out to try the piano pecking. And she was awesome! She was so good pecker and pecked right away the red dot that I had placed to the piano key I wanted her to play. The only thing was that no sound was coming out from the mini piano. I thought that the problem was that she was not pecking hard enough and to the right place. So Karen my partner placed one more dot to the piano key. And my chicken did so well again and pecked hard too, but the piano did not make sound at all.



Then I went to ask Mr. Bailey help with the piano. He observed me and my chicken and figured out what was wrong. The chicken was pecking too hard and fast the piano key. The piano key needed to have more soft touch to be played. I tried with my bottom chicken too, since she had more sweeping peck, but that did not help. She was too fast and hard enough pecker too, so I had no luck with that chicken either. Mr. Bailey told me to drop the behavior and have tomorrows evaluation only two behaviors for both of my chickens. At lunch hour I sat in the same table with Mr. Bailey and he told all the other students that too bad Anna has trained her chicken to peck too good. :)

I did try after lunch one more time the piano playing with my top chicken. I added some padding to the key with some soft tape. I thought that this would make it soft enough for my chicken to touch the key. It did not work. I was so annoyed that this task did not work. It was the only cool thing that I had for my chicken in apparatus course. All the other students from our course had all kinds of neat behaviors, like my partner Karen's chicken was bowling with a little bowling ball and tiny pins. Her chicken would peck the bowling ball and have it roll the pins down. Piano and the lifting of the animal figures were going to be my fancy behaviors but I had to give up from both of them. Although I think that Mr. Bailey was impressed of my persistence to have the chicken play the piano since he came to our table to wait me have the chicken tested with the padding. He seemed almoust as disappointed as I was since my chicken did not make it with the padding.



Tomorrow the whole class is going to have the evaluations together. We are all going to watch each other perform with the chickens. We are going to have time till lunch to practice with the chicken and then we have to do our performances. I am already nervous of the evaluation! I'm really worried that I won't have my chickens ready for the evaluation especially the red light discrimination.

Today we had all kinds of fun at the lunch break. I did the chicken painting with my top chicken. She did a really fine piece of art. Jari took the picture.



Here is my chicken painting. Jari took this picture as well.



The paint was nontoxic and we washed the chicken after painting. Daniel took this picture.




And there was border terrier puppies that Charlotte brought for early puppyhood socialization. The girl was feeling little bit chilly. How cute is this!



Look these cute puppies! Ooh!



Here is the mama.

Course III - Chaining - Day 3

When I went home yesterday I decided to think weather I should have the apparatus platforms on a higher position and the red light discrimination underneath one of the platform poles as I planed. I decided to change my plan and have the red light discrimination next to the apparatus in its usual board. That way Karen I would not have to move the platforms back and forth.

First thing in the morning I decided to get my chickens for a round on apparatus. Since I had the apparatus in lower position it was again a whole new situation to my birds. They were acting like they had never done apparatus at all. I did only one round with the chickens and put them back to cage to think what was wrong. And then it occurred to me. I was moving my body when I treated the chickens and they read some mysterious cues from it. On the next round, when I did apparatus, I stood all still and my chickens performed perfectly.

I kept working with my red light discrimination, but I had to start all over again. Yesterday at last rounds I had moved the red light discrimination task under the platform and now I was back to board. My birds got mixed up and I had to start them again waiting for just a few seconds. My bottom chicken did not do so well with the pecking and only kept sweeping the black dot. I asked advice from Mrs. Ryan and she advised me to change the stimulus picture completely and have a totally different kind of a target there for her to peck. So I went to look a different target for her and came up with red square.



My chicken liked the square a lot more than the black spot and gave me lot more harder pecks. Then Mr. Bailey saw my red target and came by to ask me that was I really sure to have a same colored target as the red light that I was using as a cue. After that I did try yellow and blue squares too, but my chicken was not interested at all of those and started easily the sweeping again. So I decided to stick with the red target.

I took two pictures to remind me how I am going to have the apparatus and the red light discrimination after it.

With top chicken I'm going to have the mini piano before the discrimination.



With the bottom chicken I only have the the discrimination board after apparatus.



I had the both chicken lifting their animal figures from left to right so I could hide the animal figures behind the pole in a way that they only see them when they walk around the pole. I'm trying to stop chickens for running from the middle of the beam strait to the animal figure without going around the pole. When they drop the figure down, it's their cue to continue walking in the apparatus.





Unfortunately my chickens had different plan in animal figure lifting. They both got too exited about their animal figures. When they saw the figures they would grab them and start shaking them like crazy. When I practiced picking up the frog with my bottom chicken about the third time Mr. Bailey was standing next to our table and saw the chicken going bonders over the frog the first time. The chicken just picked the frog and started to carry it around the table trying to hide it and did not want to give the frog back to me. Mr. Bailey wisely proposed to me that maybe I should change the frog to something not so interesting. I tested different color frog and a small bug imitation, but the chicken went bananas over those too so I tested strassel with her. And that she picked up just nicely with out any shaking. So I thought that I might as well test the same item with the other chicken and it did work much better with her too. She did also pick strassel much more nicer and did not try to kill it like she did to the poor little koala bear.



Today's lectures and talks concentrated on defining the difference between a sequence and a chain. My work in the apparatus on going to be a sequence. It is going to be a chain till the red light turns on. The red light is a new cue that starts a new chain. So I have two different chains (or even more, depending how many times the red light is going to go on the evaluation).

Here is Mr. Bailey giving one of his talks. Note his cool t-shirt and the baileyism of the day.



Finally I got Jari to help me take pictures of my boder collie chickens. My chickens are so active and always ready for action that it is impossible get a good picture of them standing in one place. So here is them tucked under my arm to have them in one place for picture.

Here is my chicken no. 29.



And here is chicken no. 48.



It was pizza and presentations night today. We had some great pizza, good conversations and Mr. Bailey and Mrs. Ryan told us training stories.



Juan from Chile showed us the plan to his new dog training center for service and assistance dogs. The premises are going to be great with indoor and outdoor training areas, dog parks, kennels and a lecture hall. And Juan is going to have a huge office just for himself.

Course III - Chaining - Day 2

On Thursday we had to turn in our plans of how our chickens are going to perform the apparatus and the selected tasks on it. Planing was kind of hard and I had to think a lot, but I managed to come up with a plan.

Here is my top chicken's end behavior:

1. Chicken walks up the ladder
2. Gets around the platform pole.
3. Walks on the bar to another platform pole.
4. On the platform chicken pick up a furry stuffed animal - a small koala bear -> drops down form the platform edge the koala bear



6. Walks down the ladder.
7. Pecks one key of mini-piano



7. Piano sound will star the laser light on the discrimination wall -> laser light discrimination

Here is Mr. Bailey explaining something in the apparatus. In the picture you can see the whole apparatus and picture my top chicken doing these behaviors on it.



My bottom chicken is going to perform the following sequence

1. Walks up the ladder.
2. Goes around the platform pole.
3. Walks o the bar to another platform.
4. On the platform picks up a rubber frog and drops it down from the platform edge.



5. Walks down the ladder.
6. Has the laser light discrimination.

We had time until noon to evaluate our plans and see how they worked. I felt good about my plan, but I did do one change. For my top chicken I had planed at home to have her pull rubber band when she comes down the ladder, but instead I planed her to do the piano playing. I found the piano from one of the toy boxes this morning and immediately thought that this could be good for my top chicken since she is so keen to peck. I evaluated her pecking to the piano and thought that I could get eventually hard enough peck that she could get one of the keys sound. And she was not even scared of the piano sound.

I spoke Jari about getting a harder peck and he proposed that I move the red target right to the edging of the piano key that I wanted her to peck. It would be the most light for her to peck in there.



I decided to practice the apparatus and dot pecking/red light behaviors today and leave the other behaviors to following days. As I had already noticed yesterday, I really did not have to practice with the chicken the apparatus. They both knew how to do it. I only reinforced them walking it to keep the behavior on.

Pecking and red laser light went OK. In the end of the day I had the bottom chicken waiting 8 seconds and bottom chicken 4 seconds the red light to be turned on. I had real problems with the bottom chicken since she stopped pecking the black dot when the red light was turned on. The reason probably was that some previous trainer had trained her sweeping the dot and hurrying to the cup when the red light was on. I only captured that behavior twice with my clicker accidentally, but then she started to offer it more and I had to be really careful that I did not click those pecks that were only sweeps to the dot.

I moved the apparatus platforms to upper position and placed the black dot/red laser light discrimination underneath the pole. My chicken went the apparatus as easily as they did before in this upper position and they perform the discrimination under the platform as good as in the board that I was rehearsing them. The only thing was that the discrimination underneath the platform was kind of hard for me and also it was really time consuming move up and down the platforms. It took me and my partner Karen 5 minutes each time to set the platform higher or lower position. Karen's chicken needed the platform in lower position. So I might have to reconsider for tomorrow that I don't have the light discrimination underneath the platform at all, but have the board next to the apparatus on the final behavior. I have to think that overnight.



Karen's chicken were really slowing down, because they were getting full . Her chicken is the chicken 47 that I had in the first course, the one that had kind of a small crop and would get full quite soon. The same chicken was having little bit issues to walk on the ladder and Mr. Bailey came for help. He advised Karen to firs just lure the bird up and down the ladder to have her move around. That did the trick and Karen started to get more foot movement.



Here is Karen's chicken already going much more quickly.



The timer was set to 44 minutes today. That meant that every trainer had 20 minutes training time. That was divided to 10 minutes training periods - so we got two 10 min training periods in one training session. The ten minutes we could use as we liked. That meant for me dividing the time between red light discrimination practice and apparatus training. Even though I did not practice the third behavior - picking up frog and koala bear - I had hard time dividing the time equally between my two chickens. I tended to practice too long with red light discrimination task.

Course III - Chaining - Day 1

The third course started almost like a routine to me, although I was again so scared of introducing myself to other people in the course. All these cool dog and animal trainers gathered together and there was I, Anna from Finland, that has just done little bit clicker training with her dogs and rabbits.

Guess what we started this course? Training our mechanical skills of course! First with the numbers - presenting the cup to a number that Mr. Bailey called and then again just feeding the chicken and observing their behavior.



I have excellent chickens at this course! We went early to class this morning and I went to see which chickens are the most active. I liked these chickens, because they both came meet me to their cage door when I walked by.

Here is my top chicken no. 29.



And my bottom chicken no.48.


I'll take some posing pictures some other day. These chicken were so active today that I could not get them stand still properly for photo taking.

In this course we are using special equipment designed by Mr. Bailey. He calls this installation an apparatus. Here is he setting up the apparatus.



There is many different ways the chicken can run the apparatus and she will have different tasks on it. Other chicken has to have three different tasks on the apparatus and the other two different tasks. Since this course is all about chaining the behaviors accomplishing in the apparatus itself is a chain of behaviors for a chicken.

Here is the apparatus in full and in front of it are all kind of toys we can include to the tasks the chicken has to do.



Chicken no. 1 has to do three tasks and one of the tasks has to be classed as discrimination behavior and one has to be non-discrete behavior and one behavior is something extra. Chicken no. 2 has to do the same without the extra behavior. Mr. Bailey introduced some behaviors so we can make up our own plan what we are going to teach to our chicken.

As a non-discriminate behavior chicken can pull something for example this pan.



Chicken can carry a small stuffed animal or a small dumbbell.



Chicken can peck a ping pong ball, required to beck so hard that it swings around on circle.



As a discrimination chicken can for example kick down a certain color cone.



There were so many activities and possibilities what the chickens could do on the apparatus that it was a good thing that we had to first evaluate our birds. We had to bring our birds to the table and show the bird all kinds of different toys and equipments to see of which the bird was interested and which she would maybe be scared.

My chickens seemed to be very keen to peck. Both of them started first to peck my hands when I carried them to the table. They noticed really fast that it was no use to peck me to hands, they got carried to the table anyway. But I thought that this was a clear sing to me, I should have them pecking tasks since they seem to be good on those.

I also tried them several objects. My top bird seemed to like small stuffed furry animals and went right to them, picked up and started to really kill the stuffed animals by shaking them. Bottom bird did not like furry animals at all and started to shake her head an turned away. What she really liked was a small rubber frog that she lifted very willingly. I thought that I should do some behaviors with these objects since they looked good to me.

I also tried to get my birds to do a spin - did not work. I tried to get them hit the ping pong ball - they were not that interested and same with pulling objects and pulling rubber band. Rubber band pulling seemed little bit more interesting to the top chicken so I kept that in my behavior list as a possible behavior for her. I also introduced them the small cones, but other chicken was only keen to peck the holes in sides of the cone and the other one started to spin around the cones - offered the same behavior she had practiced the whole last week.

With the apparatus everything went excellent. Both my chicken were aces on it. They did the apparatus with no fear. And when I had the chickens second time on the apparatus I changed the way we set it up at the first time. With this setting chicken had to walk up the ladder, go round a apparatus pole, walk the middle bar go around the pole in the other end and go down the ladder. I pushed as a test both of my chicken a lot, but it was worth it. Both of the chicken did the whole apparatus perfectly without any reinforcement! That was amazing! I got the best chickens and I am so thankful to the previous trainers in courses before that have thought this behavior so well that my chickens can still do it. This is so good since I don't have to concentrate to the apparatus behavior and I can concentrate the little tasks that the chicken has to do in her run in this apparatus.

Here is how I have now set the apparatus in the position that my chickens can do it from the beginning all the way to the end.



Here is, Karen, my new partner for this course setting up our apparatus.



For tonight we have a homework since we have to design how the chicken is going to run the apparatus and what kind of tasks she is going to complete on it. We can do bit more evaluation tomorrow morning, but by tomorrow noon we have to hand in a paper telling what our chicken is going to perform in this apparatus and how she is going to do it. This is the hard part to me. I don't have that many ideas and all the ideas I heard other people planing on the class seemed so great that I don't know if I can be as innovative as they are.

We had also a special quest speaker Mr. David Gillespie today telling us his animal training experiences in conventional dog training state Alaska.

Course II - Criteria and Cueing - Day 7

Today was the final day of the Criteria and Cueing course! I am so glad this course is over. It has been really hard course this time. Hopefully Chicken Camp III is not that intensive and hard course.

Today we had so great weather that many of us ate our lunch outside.



A lady from Legacy Canine neighborhood had five Vizsla puppies and brought them for our Chicken Camp for early puppyhood socialization. Puppies were only nine days old and so cute.





Few of the students from our class did get their chicken's graduated from both cone and cup task. Here is Jason's chicken doing figure eight around the cups. When you take the cups away from top of the cones chicken changes her behavior and does a round around the cones. That was so cool!







After lunch we had our certification ceremonies. Here is me with Mr. Bailey and Mrs. Ryan.



And here is my new certification from course two and my chicken nr. 82.



I did also do some training today. My cone chicken was changed chicken. She was so fast today! Faster than ever. If she would have been this fast the whole week she had surely graduated from all the tasks. She would do so many rounds in one practice session and she even ran! That was so great. It was a real surprise to me and we started to progress really fast. She did offer some crab walking behavior and did whole lot other behaviors, but I did not mind that, because I did get some good behaviors too and was finally able to add distance between cones. By 3.35 pm my cone chicken was ready for evaluation. I went to ask Mr. Bailey to our table. We had to restart chicken and Jackie picked her up very carefully from table, but that was too much for her sore and moulting wings. She got so confused that she went twice around the cone that was closest to me. Then I lifted her to starting place and chicken started again and did great. She did walk twice around the cones and Mr. Bailey was able to accept my cone chicken's evaluation.

Here is my chicken's evaluation marked to her registration card.



My partner Jackie's cup chicken suddenly stop working, just like my chicken had two days before. Jackie did bring her to the table couple of times today but the chicken preferred just to stand. Just like my chicken was doing two days ago.

My cup chicken kept pooping a lot today too. She would poop every time that I bought to table. Not so nice, since poor Jackie had to keep cleaning and cleaning. Today I did get some more behavior out of her too. I so wish my chicken's were like this since we begun this task. I got the cups apart so well that I was only lacking 10 centimeters distance from the final behavior. One or two more training rounds with her would have done the trick and I would have graduated this bird too. But at 4 pm Mr. Bailey announced:"Folks put 'em up, we're finishing." And we had to take our birds to their cages. Oh well, I felt much happier that I got even one chicken graduated from this task.

Before finishing the course we had to write comments about our birds wellbeing to their registration cards. I did tell all the problems my chicken had with moulting, over pooping and slow moving. The last task was to give chicken a full bowl of food to eat on their two day free time before the next course starts.



Almost all the other trainers had finished training, but Jari was determined to get both cone and cup behavior from one of his chicken. Even Jari's partner Donna had left to drive back to Canada so Mrs. Ryan standing for Donna and helping Jari to train in this next picture. But finally even Jari gave up and we got to go for our two days off from training. Well earned and waited free time!