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.
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