BEHAVIOUR & SPEECH

Keeping chickens in a forest garden, dynamics, dominance and role-play

The case of the crowing hen

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Forest garden, Monogamy, family groups, power struggles & gangs

another interesting facet of forest garden poultry is a tendency towards monogamy...read more

Forest garden, dominance, omnipotence, single sex flocks, learned helplessness

Super dominance is something I call a hen or cockerel when they take over the role of both dominant hen and dominant cockerel...read more

Chicken Speak 1 - If I could talk to the (animals) birds

Looking at the history and research behind bird communication, marking the start of a series of articles sharing ideas on how talking helps...read more

Chicken Speak 2 - Mothers and Chicks & Me 

Mother hens communicating love, distress, distrust and urgency and how understanding language helps solve potential problems. Plus the amazing language of pigeon non-verbal communication...read more

Chicken Speak 3 - The Food of Love - How Poultry Express Emotion Through Food 

For over two decades I’ve been observing the poultry in the garden and noting the marked changes in behaviour and language. To support and provide some ‘academic’ weight to my ideas about what has happened to my birds..read more

Forest Garden Poultry - Food. Putting the Jungle Back in the Fowl 1

The first part of a series in which I compare actual field studies on wild Jungle Fowl behaviours and see how my Forest Garden Flock compare...read more 

Forest Garden Poultry - Food. Putting the Jungle Back in the Fowl 2

In which I share and discuss comparisons between Jungle fowl diets, including favourite foods and that of our forest garden flock...read more 

Finding her Green Junglefowl Roots - Putting Bungle back on the beach!

Gallus gallus domesticus, the backyard chicken we know and love, is thought to have been first domesticated from the wild Junglefowl of Southeast Asia some 10,000 years ago....read more

Sunbathing in Poultry - How Poultry Obtain and Make Vitamin D₃

The full potential of D₃ in the maintenance of the physical and nervous systems of humans, animals and birds is still not fully understood today...read more

Introducing a new bird to an established flock and the problems with rehoming

It is a very different experience purchasing a new bird to having one suddenly appear and for you to rehome it, in particular when this is a cockerel or...read more