Chicken Camp: Course III - Chaining

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!