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bokbokosaurusEverything you read about chickens, especially ex-battery chickens, tells you they crave familiarity. You can't give them too much space or toys to begin with, or they freak out. You have to give them layers' mash, because it's what they're used to, or they might starve themselves to death. You have to watch their drinking very carefully, because they're not used to any kind of bowl or top-hat waterer, and they might dehydrate. (That last one is probably why waterers are usually red, to encourage them to peck at them.)
It's true, up to a point. When I put mine in their modest, fairly boring run, two went catatonic with shock and two refused point-blank to come out of the carriers. You absolutely have to make sure they're eating and drinking properly, because they might straight-up not recognise the food and water. Mine took to the nest-boxes very quickly, but people can spend weeks finding eggs all over the place and having to put them in the coop every night.
Once they were over the initial shock, though, mine turned into novelty-crazed thrill-seekers. I'm not kidding. I've never had a problem with unfamiliar food, but I've had a problem with them trying to eat everything in sight. Today Arky had quite a good go at eating the sleeve of my favourite Janis Joplin t-shirt. I have to be super-careful with the rubber gloves I wear to clean out the coop. I had to stop using straw bedding because Arky and Trex developed this mania for eating it (they eat the wood shavings as well, but at least those are short enough not to get tangled up inside them), and their first response to me re-filling their dust bath is still to try and eat it all. They have to be shut out of the coop when I'm poo-picking, or they'll try and eat their own poop, because the fact of it being moved around suddenly makes it new and delicious.
It's not just food-related, either. If they hear me moving around outside the coop before I let them out, they start jumping up and down and throwing themselves against the window. I was hammering a new roof onto their run the other day, and instead of running away from the scary banging noise, they ran towards it to see what was happening. This behaviour was at its scariest when I found a fox looking in on them, and all four staring back at it with apparent fascination. The need for novelty beats fear every time, and not in a good way.
This is because my birds are, basically, brain-damaged. I love them, and I will keep them alive for as long as they have a good quality of life. Eggs are irrelevant; if getting them implanted to stop them laying lengthens their enjoyable lives, I'll do it. But they're not right. Animals that are raised in deprived conditions end up getting excited over new things totally out of proportion to how new or exciting the thing actually is. Small changes send them mental. Alertness, curiosity and playing are generally good signs, but in these animals, they've become pathological. It's not just that they're emotionally damaged; deprived and overstimulating conditions (battery cages can probably be considered a bit of both, since they don't allow normal chicken behaviour but they're crowded, overlit and incredibly noisy) cause changes in the growth of the brain. I first read about this in Temple Grandin's Making Animals Happy, and she's got her dissertation on it on her website.
As I basically (probably mis-) understand the science, brains have dendrites, which are the fribbly branching bits on the end of nerve cells that catch the electric/chemical impulses. Animals raised in enriched environments have more dendrite growth in the bits of their brains that enable them to interact with the enrichment, and this is generally regarded as a good thing. However, animals raised in barren environments grow even more dendrites as the animal desperately tries to find things to do and gets overexcited over tiny changes, and that's not a good thing. Dendrite growth and behaviour is a bit - forgive me - chicken and egg. But the basic point is, quoting Temple Grandin's dissertation, "Placing an animal in a relatively barren environment will increase excitability, irritability, and self-stimulatory behavior."
Which is why I have thrill-seeking, brain-damaged chickens.
It's true, up to a point. When I put mine in their modest, fairly boring run, two went catatonic with shock and two refused point-blank to come out of the carriers. You absolutely have to make sure they're eating and drinking properly, because they might straight-up not recognise the food and water. Mine took to the nest-boxes very quickly, but people can spend weeks finding eggs all over the place and having to put them in the coop every night.
Once they were over the initial shock, though, mine turned into novelty-crazed thrill-seekers. I'm not kidding. I've never had a problem with unfamiliar food, but I've had a problem with them trying to eat everything in sight. Today Arky had quite a good go at eating the sleeve of my favourite Janis Joplin t-shirt. I have to be super-careful with the rubber gloves I wear to clean out the coop. I had to stop using straw bedding because Arky and Trex developed this mania for eating it (they eat the wood shavings as well, but at least those are short enough not to get tangled up inside them), and their first response to me re-filling their dust bath is still to try and eat it all. They have to be shut out of the coop when I'm poo-picking, or they'll try and eat their own poop, because the fact of it being moved around suddenly makes it new and delicious.
It's not just food-related, either. If they hear me moving around outside the coop before I let them out, they start jumping up and down and throwing themselves against the window. I was hammering a new roof onto their run the other day, and instead of running away from the scary banging noise, they ran towards it to see what was happening. This behaviour was at its scariest when I found a fox looking in on them, and all four staring back at it with apparent fascination. The need for novelty beats fear every time, and not in a good way.
This is because my birds are, basically, brain-damaged. I love them, and I will keep them alive for as long as they have a good quality of life. Eggs are irrelevant; if getting them implanted to stop them laying lengthens their enjoyable lives, I'll do it. But they're not right. Animals that are raised in deprived conditions end up getting excited over new things totally out of proportion to how new or exciting the thing actually is. Small changes send them mental. Alertness, curiosity and playing are generally good signs, but in these animals, they've become pathological. It's not just that they're emotionally damaged; deprived and overstimulating conditions (battery cages can probably be considered a bit of both, since they don't allow normal chicken behaviour but they're crowded, overlit and incredibly noisy) cause changes in the growth of the brain. I first read about this in Temple Grandin's Making Animals Happy, and she's got her dissertation on it on her website.
As I basically (probably mis-) understand the science, brains have dendrites, which are the fribbly branching bits on the end of nerve cells that catch the electric/chemical impulses. Animals raised in enriched environments have more dendrite growth in the bits of their brains that enable them to interact with the enrichment, and this is generally regarded as a good thing. However, animals raised in barren environments grow even more dendrites as the animal desperately tries to find things to do and gets overexcited over tiny changes, and that's not a good thing. Dendrite growth and behaviour is a bit - forgive me - chicken and egg. But the basic point is, quoting Temple Grandin's dissertation, "Placing an animal in a relatively barren environment will increase excitability, irritability, and self-stimulatory behavior."
Which is why I have thrill-seeking, brain-damaged chickens.
