The topic of chicken training is something I have never heard of. I did some research and despite what you might think, it is supposedly pretty easy. It is said that chickens learn faster than dogs and are very intelligent. My source says that training involves a simple few things - a hungry animal in a comfortable environment and a trainer with good timing. Basically, if your chicken is comfortable around you, then the training will be quick. The trainer must use a variety of tricks for positive reinforcement, similar to a dog. Chickens are trained along the basis of operant conditioning. Chicken training has become a more popular hobby for dog trainers because they are trained so similarly. One common thing to teach chickens is going through an obstacle course and there has even been research done a chicken that can play tic-tac-toe. Theres is actually a chicken training seminar by Bob Bailey who teaches chickens to discriminate between shapes and chain behaviors together. Overall, the message is, if you didn't know, chicken training exists. Here is a video of Bob Bailey and the various training techniques he uses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJtf9YxZkNI
Animal Training - Chickens
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This is very interesting. I did not know that chickens were smarter than dogs. In fact, I didn't even know they were smart at all! Operant Conditioning for chickens is actually very cool because, I'm assuming, it's basically like what they do for a dog. The positive reinforcement comes into play as well. Treats seem to make everyone happy...!
Chicken training - who would have thought that this would be of interest to people. My grandparents had chickens but I never thought of them as being very intelligent. I think I would find more enjoyment out of training a dog than a chicken.