Chickens are maligned for their supposed stupidity, hence the derogatory term “dumb clucks.” But any chicken owner will tell you that’s a bad rap. Our feathered friends may not be the brightest members of the animal kingdom, but they’re a lot smarter than their reputation would suggest.
As Kimberly Willis and Rob Ludlow point out in Raising Chickens for Dummies, chickens "are pretty intelligent. They can learn to count and understand the concept of zero. They can be trained to do tricks and recognize colors. They can figure out how to get out of almost any pen you put them in, sooner or later." Chickens can plan future actions and anticipate reactions to something they're about to do, the authors note. "And chickens learn by observing and copying other chickens."
Over the past year or so, I’ve seen such claims of intelligence borne out by our own tiny flock of hens, which began with three “girls” and is now down to two. Two newcomers will soon join the current duo.
This week was a case in point. We had unseasonably warm weather here in Augusta, Maine, a few days ago, with temperatures jumping into the mid to upper 70s. On Tuesday, the first day of this mini heat wave, the girls rarely ventured out to their open-air pen, opting instead to avoid the sun by holing up in, or under, their elevated coop.
The following day, which was just as sunny and even hotter, I placed an old patio umbrella right outside the 4x6 foot pen, to shade it. Sure enough, the hens pecked and poked and strutted their stuff in the pen almost all day long, only venturing into the coop to lay their eggs. They even spent a long spell lying in the shade of the umbrella.
Considering how many clueless people go through their lives overdressed in the summer and underdressed in the winter, my “dumb clucks” are more in tune with Mother Nature than many a mere human.
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