Course I - Discrimination - Day 1

The chicken camp started today! Chicken camp is a nickname for Bob Bailey's operant conditioning workshops where chickens are used as training objects. Why chicken? They are fast and easy to maintain for course like this.

Today started with lectures of animal training and applied behavior analysis. We also had practical training of training mechanics, coaching and chicken wrangling. The training of training mechanics included practicing with all the equipment we had without chicken: first handling the chicken's feeding cup in different position, then adding food in to it and then including the clicker. Boy, was I slow! My partner Ana was so much faster than I.

Here is all the equipment:


Finally we met our chickens. Everyone has two chickens that are assigned to them for whole course.

Here are my "ladies". Chicken number 13 "the top chicken" and chicken number 47 "the bottom chicken."


I selected the top chicken and the bottom chicken came with her. The reason that I selected her was because she was so calm, at least she seemed so. By the time we got handling them she was walking very nervously a round her cage and I decided to handle first the bottom chicken. Look how angry the top chicken looks:



The top chicken was kind of sad case though. She had her feathers all gone from her tail and her wattle was all pink. When I handled her she talked a lot and dropped more her feathers. Hopefully she'll get more used to me tomorrow.

Here is a picture of the bottom chicken. She has nice red wattle and she was much more co-operative and really eager to eat.



Here is me handling the top chicken first time. My partner Ana took the picture.


If you are wondering the small cages don't think ill of those. Those are for the course purposes only. Normally the chicken live in this beautiful blue cottage with nice yard.



This is the classroom we are studying learning theory. The instructor Bob Bailey shows how big animals he has trained before.



Here is the place Canine Legacy where the course is held.



Today the theory part was not that new to me but I learned lot of chicken handling and how we should start to train any new animal. Now got to go back to homework that was reading articles about Changing behavior and How to train chicken.