Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Mother of Chaos]

Blissing out

 

[Vulpes vulpes]

Yes I see a difference in chicks raised in a brooder or by a hen. The hen raised are predator and whats good to eat savvy quicker.

It goes beyond learning what to eat and when to run or hide, there's even more fundamental developmental milestones during chickhood -- milestones that are almost always absent in incubated chicks. I believe the two that are most commonly missed (and most important) are imprinting and occlusion experiences.

Imprinting is self evident; it helps embryos and freshly hatched chicks learn not only who mom is, but who/what they themselves are and how to recognize individuals. I do not believe that the knowledge of "I am a chicken" is innate, rather it is learned early in development.

Occlusion experiences occur when chicks (starting around day 10 after hatch) deliberately venture out of line of sight of mom, specifically so they can figure out how to get back to her. At this age, finding their way to an object they cannot see helps develop their navigational "software," which carries over into adulthood. I suspect that many instances of adult chickens having silly "glitches" when navigating can be explained at least in part by missing this milestone. That's just a guess though.

It is important to mention that, while a broody hen will always outperform us in things like this, there's ways to provide these experiences as a human keeper. For example, using a large brooder and, starting at day 10, adding visual barriers for the chicks to navigate around will provide them with occlusion experiences.

Also, I don't have the sources for this on hand, but I can go find them if anyone would like to read them

 

[BDutch]

. I suspect that many instances of adult chickens having silly "glitches" when navigating can be explained at least in part by missing this milestone. That's just a guess though.

Never gave this a thought before you mention it. I always thought the silly hens I had had a lower IQ or a navigating defect in their genes.

My experience (this is why):
When I started with chickens almost 12 years ago I had a pyle coloured hen (Dutch) who was a bit stupid compared to the others. She never understood fences. Tried to walk through many times before she walked around. A year later all my 3 hens got broody and hatched some eggs. I kept 3 hens. 1 was pyle coloured and surely a daughter of the pyle mother.

Initially this chick was raised by 2 Dutch broodies who hatched her and a few more chicks (boys). After a week/10 day she was flock raised with the broody and chicks who hatched a few days later. The pyle cockerel who was their father was gone bc the neighbours no longer tolerated his wake up calls.

This pyle chick/pullet/hen had trouble navigating around a fence her whole life, just like her mother. The 2 black pullets, daughters of the other broody, learned at a young age how fences work.
All other chicks I had were broody raised too and learned while they were chicks how to go around fences.

I’m not saying you are wrong, my (one and only) experience just points in another direction.

 

[kattabelly]

Occlusion experiences occur when chicks (starting around day 10 after hatch) deliberately venture out of line of sight of mom, specifically so they can figure out how to get back to her. At this age, finding their way to an object they cannot see helps develop their navigational "software," which carries over into adulthood. I suspect that many instances of adult chickens having silly "glitches" when navigating can be explained at least in part by missing this milestone. That's just a guess though.

It is important to mention that, while a broody hen will always outperform us in things like this, there's ways to provide these experiences as a human keeper. For example, using a large brooder and, starting at day 10, adding visual barriers for the chicks to navigate around will provide them with occlusion experiences.

This is something I make a point of doing with incubator hatched chicks, starting at just a few days old with very small and simple obstacles, and I do usually notice a difference between chicks I've raised myself and chicks raised by other humans who don't go to so much effort to give them as close a start as possible to what they'd get being raised by a broody hen.

With the ones I have being raised by a broody right now, they started pretty early and were already very confident venturing off on their own for a while by day ten so long as they weren't somewhere they'd get cold quickly.