Chicken - the animal model
Encouraged by the example of Marian Breland-Bailey and Bob Bailey, pioneers in the application of behavioral training methods, we use chickens as an animal model during our workshops.
Choice of chicken is not a marketing ploy designed to surprise audience. Their choice have been decided by many factors.
The most important are:
- Chicken can not learn anything by force. Birds do not lend themselves to manipulation!
This shows how our idea of training is often wrong. We consider chickens to be "stupid" because they cannot be forced to do anything. Chicken training shows the true potential and versatility of methods based on positive reinforcement. - The results of training emerge quickly - what in the case of other animals would take days, with the chicken takes a minute.
Thus starting from "raw" (ie never trained) chicken, we are able within 3 days to teach him (and ourselves) quite a lot. - The simplicity of the chicken makes any changes in behavior clear and not obscured.
If the chicken faces no danger and there is no flock nearby to interact with it does not manifest other behaviors than exploration. - Chicken is fast, faster than most animals,, and therefore requires reflex and sense of observation.
Both of these qualities, necessary for effective training, you can train. When we get practice at one of the most difficult animals - the chicken, other species will not be a problem. - Trainer errors manifest in the behavior of chicken immidiately.
A horse or a dog will finally learn what we want, regardless of the trainer mistakes (albeit slowly and not very well). Chicken in contact with similar faults simply will not learn anything or will be so slow that the trainer errors are easily spotted. Training chickens can catch show us our own mistakes, which might otherwise elude us. - Emotional relationship with the trainer is not a significant factor in training (from chicken viewpoint).
Although participants generally become attached to their chickens, the birds are basically indifferent. Emotional relationship is very often an obstacle to effective training, because it does not allow the trainer to maintain objectivity and trained pet quickly learns that it is so.