Rock around the cluck
Mar 31, 2021
4 minutes
WHY did the cockerel cross the track? To get to the barn, where the chicken feed is now stored.
Our Maran cock, Robespierre (‘the terror of the farmyard’), on discovering that the metal feed bin was not in its usual place in the woodshed, had gone off exploring to find it.
Chickens? Often assumed to be the lowest in the pecking order of avian intelligence. The reality? The world’s most common farmed animal—there are 19 billion chickens on planet Earth—is not such a dumb-cluck. Quite apart from possessing the numeracy skills of a human three year old, chickens are able to recognise 90 others in the flock (whether live or in photographs) and even do a passable feathered puzzle-solving imitation
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