Chicken Camp not just for Birds

Sophia Yin, DVM San Francisco Chronicle October 2000

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Your missions -- should you accept. To train two chickens to perform four tasks in five days.

Task 1 -- the bread pan pull -- the chicken must grasp a loop tied to a bread pan and with one continuous tug drag the pan two feet.
Task 2 -- the ping pong peck -- the chicken must peck a tethered ping pong ball one time hard enough to sent it flying in a circle up and over it's support post.
Task 3 -- the bowling pin strike out -- the chicken must sequentially knock down a blue bowling pin and a yellow bowling pin in a specified order.
Task 4 -- the vertical dot spot -- the chicken must peck a vertical one centimeter black dot on cue and only on cue three times in 15 seconds. The cue is a red laser dot.

Either bird can learn the tasks, but each must learn at least one task and one must perform three tasks in sequence. Time is of the essence.

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Sounds like a joke, but this is serious business. It's the intermediate operant conditioning workshop, a.k.a. chicken training camp, taught by Bob Bailey and psychologist, Marian Breland-Bailey. And trainers flock from all over the world to participate.

To be fair, we don't attend just for the opportunity to train a chicken, rather, we're here to learn the intricacies of a universal mechanism of learning called operant conditioning. Elucidated in the early 1900s by psychologist B.F. Skinner, this theory says that if you reinforce a behavior, it's more likely to occur again. If you don't reinforce it, it's less likely to occur. It's a simple idea, almost intuitive, but oh is it easy to bungle.

Our chickens have already been trained that a click from a toy clicker means food's coming so we can use the sound to bridge the gap between the behavior we want and the food reinforcement. This bridging stimulus allows us to tell the chicken precisely when it's doing something right. Unfortunately for us, even a fraction of a second error in timing can give the chicken the wrong idea. We soon have chickens that peck our laser cue instead of our black dot, that shake the loop tied to the pan instead of pulling it, and that grasp the ping pong ball rather than giving strong pecks.

An onlooker might attribute the incorrect behaviors to the dimwitted chicken, but the student trainers know better. The Baileys constantly remind us, "You get the behavior you reinforce." We're familiar with these words. We've spoken them to our own students. "Your dog won't come when you call because he's getting better reinforcement from his puppy playmates. Your horse keeps dragging you around because he gets to eat grass once he gets you to where he wants to go."

Now it's our turn to heed out own words. We desperately search for our mistakes and try to correct them. The clock is ticking.

You're probably wondering, why chickens?. For one, their speed means that our timing must be impeccable. But, in addition say the instructors, "No matter how you slice it, the chicken is the best teaching tool for training animals. It offers more behaviors and more repetitions in the shortest amount of time." And they have the experience and records to prove it. Together the Baileys have trained over 140 species of animal and represent 103 years of animal training.

A hundred plus years seems like a long time, but Marian and her now-deceased first husband, Keller, learned these techniques directly from the source. As BF Skinner's first graduate students, they learned to gradually shape behaviors using positive reinforcement and as scientists they learned to do something that most animal trainers omit,to keep rigorous records.

We try to follow their example. Every training session we take notes. How many times have we reinforced the chicken for correct behavior? What percentage of time is it offering the correct behavior? By keeping these records when can make better decisions on when to expect more from our bird and when we've messed up. We also record the number of times we reinforced at the wrong time. A few of these and we're back to square one. It's an up hill battle for us, but a few make it to the top.

On day five it's time to show our bird's stuff. My bird has a weak chain of two behaviors that it can perform. In a sort of abbreviated mission, I set her down on the table for all to see and then hold my breath. She makes a beeline for the blue bowling pin and beaks it off the table. Then, like poultry with a purpose, she heads over to the yellow. Ponk! It's off the table. She turns to me expectantly. No treat yet. She searches for the second task. Then sees it. A little white ball hanging a foot high. She stuts over, cocks her head and bam! it flings over it's post.

Click. Treat. Mission accomplished.

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© 2000 Sophia Yin, DVM No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission from Sophia Yin.
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