"I'm going to talk to you about one of the most important creatures man has tamed - the domestic hen." "Let's just see how this bird is different." "There are nearly seven billion humans on earth but there are 16 billion chickens." "They're the closest living relative to Tyrannosaurus rex, and there are more of them than any other bird." "Grab it, Jane!" "Bloody fast!" "Bloody fast!" "Yet we know very little about chickens." "Ooh!" "What goes on inside those bird brains?" "I want to learn about these birds." "I want to know what goes on behind the hen-house door." "Look, here we go." "Oh, there we go, it's kicking off now." "There are more than 10,000 species of bird on the planet." "We've only domesticated seven of them for food." "And by far the most successful is the chicken." "I wonder why, out of all birds, did we choose to domesticate them?" "Chickens are very familiar to us but we know next to nothing about them." "I've decided to set up a series of experiments to understand their behaviour and get inside their minds." "I want to know who rules the roost in the flock..." "Right, here he goes." "..to find out how they spot predators." "I want to know if there's more to chickens than meets the eye." "That's quite crafty, then?" "They are crafty, oh yes." "What I discover about chickens is going to make us look at them in a very different way." "COCKEREL CROWS" "I've come to Jane Howorth's farm in Devon, to investigate the hidden life of chickens." "Jane's been rescuing battery hens for the last 15 years, taking the birds and passing them on to people to keep as egg-laying pets." "I've bought chickens from her in the past, and I'd say she knows more about these birds than anyone else I've met." "Jane, how many chickens have you got here?" "Oh, round about 100 here, Jim." "This is my motley crew, as I call them." "These are all the birds that have come out from the cages." "They're not quite well enough to be re-homed." "So they may have had a broken wing." "I've got Winnie here who's got a broken wing, so actually she ended up staying." "Right." "She's very happy." "So I've got quite a fair few characters." "My two little cockerels, William and Harry." "Ha-ha!" "They keep the girls under control and look after them a little bit." "They've all got names?" "They have, yeah, they have." "Why do you give them names?" "They're all individual characters and that really sort of comes through." "Occasionally we'll give a hen a name but her character will be so strong, we'll change her name to fit." "Are there some chickens that you think are kind and others are pretty nasty?" "Definitely." "You get your boss chickens..." "You get bullies..." "You get the quiet ones and the "right up in your face" ones." "Yeah." "Jane thinks her chickens are pretty wonderful creatures." "But I'm not so sure." "When I think of chickens, the word "bird-brained" springs to mind." "What on earth has made chickens the most successful birds in the world?" "I've got chickens on my farm and they range around and do their own thing, lay a few eggs." "But why did we domesticate the chicken in the first place?" "Why these birds?" "Why haven't we got billions of geese or partridge or pheasant?" "It's a bit of a conundrum to me, really." "Yes, chickens are tasty and lay eggs, but that's the same for lots of birds." "They're relatively small, so they're easy to keep, especially because they can't fly very far or very high." "But there must be more to their success than the fact that they're small and tasty." "I'm going to conduct a series of tests to uncover their secret lives and abilities." "I suspect there's something about their nature that makes them perfect for domestication." "And I want to find out what." "The term "pecking order" was first introduced into English in 1925 after a Norwegian professor coined the phrase." "But how does a flock of chickens settle on a pecking order?" "Jane's going to help me to find out." "Here you go, have some treats." "Come on, girls." "Hi, Jane." "Hi there, Jim." "So what's all this about?" "This is my hospital." "So you've got a chicken hospital?" "I do have a chicken hospital, yes." "So it's like hen ER in here, is it?" "It is a little bit, yes." "So you bring in hens here that need an extra bit of care?" "Yes." "And you put them in all different sorts of enclosures along here." "Is there a certain pecking order?" "You've got one that pushes the others away?" "Yes, I have." "Polly is top chicken in here." "So she's the one that's feeding at the moment." "Polly and Shorty, this is Shorty - hello, Shorty - get first go at the nice bits." "So they get first dibs, get all the goodies out, and keep the other hens out the way." "Yes, they will do." "And why is one chicken more dominant?" "Is it the bigger, more aggressive chicken?" "How does it work?" "It can be a number of things." "Maybe she's really super-healthy, so she's sort of come up the rankings, come out of moult, got some nice new feathers." "It can be that she's just a dominant character, really." "Right." "Polly is the dominant hen in the hospital flock." "But what happens when a new bird joins the group?" "I'm going to be bringing Dolly in today, actually." "She had an old break that she came here with." "I'm bringing her in to introduce to the girls." "When Dolly comes in will that change the pecking order?" "Yes, it will." "This lot will probably bully her and let her know that she's the new kid on the block." "Oh, poor old Dolly." "Well, let's see what happens, then." "Jane thinks Dolly will benefit from a brief stay in the hospital." "But any new arrival will have to establish her place in the pecking order." "Come on, Dolly, you're not going to like this very much, sweetheart." "But we've got to take you into the hospital." "It's not for long." "I know." "Bit irritating, isn't it, Dolly?" "A bit of TLC." "Exactly." "A bit of warmth." "A few treats." "Then you've got to contend with all those other girls that already know where they stand." "Yeah." "Give as good as you get, that's what I reckon, Dolly." "Yeah." "Just like being the new kid at school, isn't it?" "Yeah." "So how long will you keep her in for?" "See how she gets on really, Jim." "Could be just a few days, maybe up to a week." "I'd like to keep her not too long because I want to be able to put her back out." "Right." "Come on, Dolly." "There you are." "There we go." "Nice bit of food." "Oh, she's straight into the food." "Yeah." "Looking for the hens' reaction to this newcomer," "Jane's experienced eye spots signs I'd never notice." "Polly's gone very stiff, can you see?" "I can see." "And Shorty." "Shorty's gone very sort of, stock still." "The wings are coming down, Jim, both on Polly and Shorty." "That's one of the signs." "They drop the wings to let them know somebody strange is here." "Polly's a bit surprised that this chicken's come in and settled so quickly." "She's not showing any signs of respect!" "Yeah." "This is our hospital, our treats..." "Yeah, we've been here the longest." "..our food." "Who is this impostor?" "She might suddenly have a peck." "She will now." "Oh, there we go it's kicking off." "Oh." "Oh, yeah." "There we are, Shorty's trying to tell her." "So this is them sorting themselves out?" "They will, yes." "Girls, come on, be nice to each other." "Shorty's trying to dominate, "This is my ground," but Dolly's holding her own really quite well." "So if Dolly pushes Shorty off, then Dolly, immediately, is pretty high up the ranking?" "Yes, definitely." "Yes, she would be." "CHICKEN SCREECHES" "They're actually communicating." "If you listen to them they are actually, probably, quietly swearing at each other." "Ha-ha!" ""You bleeding..." "Why, I oughta!"" "Shorty will actually invite Dolly to come over, and by picking up little bits of straw, trying to fool Dolly that there's something tasty there, just so she can get her within range, and then go in for the peck." "Gosh, she's quite crafty." "They are crafty." "Oh, yes." "The feathers are really starting to fly now." "I knew that roosters could be pretty aggressive, but who would have thought it of hens?" "There's a real stand off..." "..but eventually Dolly backs down, and Polly remains head hen in the hospital." "I can see how this hierarchy amongst hens helped us domesticate them, and because chickens keep a firm pecking order, it makes it easy for us to keep them in large numbers." "But I want to see exactly how these birds communicate." "What techniques do they use?" "Right, lets have a look at what we've got." "Dr Siobhan Abeyesinghe, from the London Vet School, studies the social behaviour of chickens." "She's going to show me how they do it." "We've taken six birds from Jane's outdoor flock and marked their tails with coloured paint, so we can tell who's who." "At first glance, this just looks like chickens eating round a bowl." "But there's something else going on." "These birds know each other and already have an established pecking order." "Ah look, here's a bit of interaction." "Yeah." "So purple's telling red where to go." "Oh!" "And orange is on black." "When they peck at each other there's a particular peck that determines who's boss." "Aggressive pecks are generally directed towards the head and neck, quite often from more of a height, quite fast downward pecks." "So it's very specific?" "Yeah, it's a very specific type of peck." "As well as pecking, Siobhan tells me that these birds do have a more subtle way of communicating who's top chicken." "When there was lots of food and it was worth the subordinates chancing their arm and trying to grab one, then they all piled in." "But now that the food's depleted and there's less of it, whoever's the more dominant bird is more likely to hog it." "You can start to see that orange is really dominating that bowl." "She is, yeah." "And the others are deferring to her." "The aggressive orange hen is called Margot." "She dominates this group." "Whenever Margot approaches the bowl, the other hens just move away." "How does she do it?" "Often birds will just need to reinforce with a threat." "It's usually a fixed stare and the subordinate bird will usually drop eye contact and duck away, maybe turn its head away, or might even walk away." "Wow." "Quite subtle." "It is." "Just a stare and then the chicken will back off." "All it takes is a dirty look from Margot and the threat of a peck, and green - that's Bonnie - turns tail." "To the untrained eye, this is just a bunch of chickens pecking in a box." "But when you study them closely you can see just how sophisticated and varied their communication is." "Every flock has a pecking order, and that means that every chicken knows its place." "This reduces the need for fighting every time there's food available." "But the way they keep order really impresses me." "They communicate and they co-operate with each other." "This subtle communication makes them the perfect birds for us to keep." "They organise themselves into flocks, we don't have to herd them about, and they don't look to humans to be their pack leaders." "Chickens are easy." "We first domesticated chickens 8,000 years ago." "In addition to them being easy to keep, they were also pretty easy to breed." "I've been to poultry shows up and down the country, and at every one you can see an astounding array of chickens." "In fact there are more than 200 different breeds of domestic chicken." "Every one of them effectively created by us." "Some, like the Leghorns, have been bred for egg laying." "Light Sussex chickens are dual purpose birds - good for eggs and meat." "Old English Game birds were originally kept for fighting." "And some, like the Frizzle, have just been bred for show." "With such a huge variety of chickens, of all different shapes and sizes, I do wonder where this species came from in the first place." "Now you might be as surprised as I was to discover that there's a man at Oxford University who has spent the last ten years studying the chicken's wild ancestor." "I hope Dr Tom Pizzari can tell me a bit more about them." "I thought I'd show you what wild chickens actually look like." "There are wild chickens in South East Asia, they're called red jungle fowl." "And this is really the ancestral population that produced all the different breeds of domestic chicken." "Wow." "Isn't it funny?" "People, don't think of chickens being a wild animal." "No, absolutely not." "Yet he's displaying exactly the same behaviour as the cockerels in the paddock." "Yeah, look at that." "Now looking at this wild bird here, this is a tropical bird living on a forest floor." "Why on earth did we domesticate this animal, the jungle fowl, rather than any other species of bird?" "They're very social." "This means that people can keep them in large groups, which obviously helps." "They are highly adaptable, they have a very diverse diet, and they are able to live in a very wide range of environments, from tropical forests to the foothills of the Himalaya." "Through to caged, commercial systems." "Absolutely, yes, they are a victim of their own success, in a way." "As animals, they're good all-rounders?" "They are." "They can be in the snow, they could be in hot climates, they like a varied diet." "Do you think one of the great reasons that they're domesticated is because they're pretty good to eat?" "That's the third reason, absolutely, yes." "Ha-ha!" "It's bad news if you're delicious, in other words!" "Yes, absolutely, yes." "Chickens originated in Thailand but were brought to Europe 2,000 years ago." "From the 15th century, chickens were carried all over the world by European colonists." "We domesticated chickens for their eggs, their meat and even because we liked to see them fight." "But how much wild behaviour do Jane's ex-battery chickens still have?" "Tom tells me that jungle fowl avoid predators by staying under cover and that the males give alarm calls to warn of any danger." "CLUCKING AND SCREECHING" "I wonder how Jane's domestic birds would react to predators?" "Will they panic, or call to warn each other of the danger?" "COCKEREL CROWS" "To help me, I've enlisted Dr Joah Madden, an Animal Behaviour specialist with a wily-looking stuffed fox, and falconer David Buncle with Conan, a Harris hawk." "What a beautiful bird." "Isn't it?" "Hope he's had his breakfast." "Yeah, should be." "Might not be chicken on the menu." "I hope not." "The response will be interesting." "What do you think will happen?" "What will they do, will they crow when they see these animals?" "We know that chickens give two different types of alarm call." "They give one sort of call when they see a threat from the sky, in terms of an aerial predator, and one sort of call when they see a threat from the ground, in terms of something like a fox." "Time to put the chickens to the test." "We're going to introduce the predators, but will Jane's cockerels, William and Harry, warn the hens?" "First up, it's Conan the Harris hawk." "Facing this cruel-beaked predator, have the chickens met their match?" "The cockerels should be on the look out, but are William and Harry up to the job?" "Right, there he goes, there he goes." "Look at the cockerel." "That cockerel, straight away he went, "What was that?" Looked straight up." "William and Harry are immediately on guard and alert to the danger." "COCKEREL CROWS" "William is the first to raise the alarm." "All the hens have moved under the trees for cover." "They're heading for cover." "We saw them running under the bushes, heading for that cover, protection from above." "But Conan is a seasoned predator." "He'll bide his time until the chickens think the danger has passed." "It's almost like he's stalking in there, hopping from tree to tree." "Yeah, yeah." "It's still quite calm on the ground." "The hens are still pecking around but the cockerels are definitely..." "They know something's happening They sense..." "They probably do spend a lot of time "on guard," keeping an eye out for potential predators." "He's calling him in now." "WHISTLING" "Here he comes, look at this." "Suddenly, Conan swoops." "Because William and Harry had given the aerial alarm call, all the hens were under the bushes and well-protected." "The flock stays together, even under attack." "Their keen eyesight means they can immediately detect danger." "All the chickens are safe." "But how will they react to the fox?" "After humans, foxes are chickens' greatest natural predator." "They will test every bit of fencing around a chicken coop, and if there's a way in, a fox will find it." "In the wild, chickens would head for the trees." "CHICKENS CLUCKING" "But in a hen house there's no escape." "So Jane's lot should be worried." "They haven't seen our fox yet, but when he's pulled along he'll be in full view." "They all seem to be just busy pecking." "Relaxed." "Not really worrying about anything." "No, none really with heads up." "You can see the rooster, he's looking around the most." "He should be the lookout." "Let's see if he picks up on it." "Wow, that is an amazing response, isn't it?" "They're very interested in it." "They're not fooled, are they?" "It's something, it's something new in their environment which has interested them." "Yeah." "They've all extended their necks to have a look?" "They're having a look up but, er..." "It's a stuffed fox and they know it." "Yeah, they've probably seen real foxes, haven't they, moving naturally?" "Certainly." "I mean that's a pretty smooth moving fox." "I'm impressed that the chickens weren't fooled." "I thought even a stuffed fox might send them running." "But chickens see movement at double the speed of human vision." "Where we see quick movement as a blur, they see the detail." "They can distinguish between a naturally moving predator and a stuffed one on rails, in a fraction of a second." "And chickens' eyes are even more finely tuned." "Their left and right eyes act independently." "Their right eye concentrates on finding food, while the left eye is on alert for predators or prey." "With such acute vision for movement, it's not surprising that chickens are pretty good predators themselves." "Yes, that's right - chickens hunt." "And it's certain death for any mouse or frog that strays into a chicken run." "Because chickens will hunt and kill with devastating speed." "When Minnie catches her prey, she'll run with it to get away from the others and keep the meat to herself." "She'll then beat it about a bit and swallow it whole." "There's still a fair bit of wild behaviour in these domesticated birds after all." "Despite Harry's enthusiastic attempts to mate with Minnie, hens don't need cockerels around for them to produce eggs." "None of the eggs we eat have been fertilised." "A big factor as to why we keep chickens is, of course, the fact that they do lay eggs." "A source of protein that we don't need to kill the bird to get at." "We eat 30 million eggs every day in Britain alone." "That's nearly 11,000 million a year!" "Now everyone knows that hens lay eggs, but how is an egg formed inside a chicken?" "Well, I'm going to show you using this snooker ball, and this section from a pair of tights." "The yolk is released from the ovary into a structure called the oviduct." "You must imagine that this is inside a chicken." "Now, once it's released, it passes into the oviduct and it hangs around for about 15 minutes and this is the time where the yolk can be fertilised or not." "It then travels on a bit further down its journey to an area where the white of the egg is added, the albumen." "So you can imagine this is the yolk, there, and that contains all the moisture that the developing embryo's going to need." "Now this structure moves further down the oviduct till it gets to an area where two membranes are stretched over it to form this, which is a bit like a squashy egg really." "Now I've made this by leaving a hen's egg in vinegar for a couple of days." "And if you look closely you can see the yolk inside moving around." "If the hen was to lay this it would be useless, it would split open and plus the hen couldn't really sit on it, to incubate it." "So what it needs is a hard shell." "So this moves further down to another area called the shell gland." "Now this is where the hard outer shell is secreted on, and it's a mixture of calcium carbonate and proteins." "And once that's secreted all the way round, it hardens off." "This takes about 20 hours and then it's ready to be laid." "The interesting thing about eggs, eggs are always laid with the fat end first, so it comes out like that every single time, forming a perfect egg." "Once the egg is laid, half an hour later the whole process begins again." "Isn't nature amazing?" "The hens are turning in now, all going home to roost." "There are a few pecks over who gets the best perch or nest box, but eventually everyone's settled and has their place for the night." "And in the morning all these girls will be laying an egg." "COCKEREL CROWS" "So far I've discovered that chickens have a rigid pecking order and can avoid predators well." "But now I want to find out if they can learn new things." "Just how clever are they?" "I've asked four Animal Behaviour students from Exeter University to put Jane's chickens to the test to see if these birds can discriminate between human symbols." "Right, how you doing, guys?" "All right." "Now what are you doing with these chickens, here?" "Well, basically we're going to teach them to discriminate between shapes, stars and circles." "Right." "So the end result, hopefully a bird will turn up and go, "I'm going for stars or circles." Yeah." "And you think these guys can do that?" "Yeah, I think so, yeah." "So the students are going to train Jane's chickens to discriminate between stars and circles, to find out if the bird brains can learn quickly or not." "We're using food to motivate the chickens." "Most animals can be taught in this way, but will the chickens be able to do it?" "For our hens, this is going to be a real test of learning power and memory." "The students have a bit of time to train them, so I'm going to leave them to it." "Jane runs a very efficient operation here, but there would be no need for her to rescue these birds if we hadn't changed the way we farm chickens in the last 50 years." "During the Second World War there were severe food shortages in Britain." "Eggs were rationed, and for much of the time only imported powdered egg was available." "After the war there was a huge drive to increase domestic food production, and chickens were seen as a big part of the answer." "In the 1940s, chickens were a common sight in the British countryside." "They were mostly kept for eggs and would only be killed for meat when their egg-laying days were over." "Chicken was neither a common or particularly cheap meat." "Until the 1950s, rabbit was more popular on British dinner tables." "But in 1953 a British farmer managed to introduce a new hybrid chicken from America into the UK." "It was specially bred for a new way of rearing chickens - the factory farms." "On these farms there were two types of chicken, one for eating, and one for laying eggs." "And today no chicken we eat has ever laid an egg." "There was a revolution in the British diet." "In 1950 British consumers only ate one million chickens a year." "By the '60s it was a different story." "ARCHIVE: 200 million chickens get eaten every year in Britain." "A further 60 million spend their lives laying eggs, enough for each of us to have an egg a day, every day of the year." "Chicken became central to the British diet." "The new intensive farms became the main method of rearing chickens." "Humans have shaped and changed chickens enormously." "We've changed how quickly they grow and how frequently they lay eggs." "But how far have we changed their nature?" "Today I'm going to help Jane collect the latest consignment of battery hens." "I want to see how they adapt to their new found freedom." "Last two crates, Jim." "We're picking up how many today?" "Oh, it's a very small collection today." "Just 100 so..." "You're going to get a 100 chickens in this little van?" "Yeah, I am." "So it's a bit like a military operation this, isn't it?" "It is, yes." "It works really well, though." "I've had lots of practice and it'll mean a lot of happy hens at the end of the day." "Brilliant." "OK." "OK a bit like the Batmobile." "It is, isn't it?" "The Henmobile." "It is, something like that." "We're away." "Jane's charity rescued 60,000 battery hens last year, and they get around 1,200 off to new homes every week." "The farm we're going to isn't far from Jane's place, and the farmer's agreed to let Jane take 125 chickens who would otherwise be going for the chop." "OK, Jim, here we are." "Right." "Here they are, girls." "Hi, girls." "Wow." "Ready to go to your new homes?" "There are 2,000 chickens in this shed... ..and they've spent their whole lives indoors." "There she is, first one." "She's in nice nick." "She's in beautiful condition." "Nicely feathered." "There we go." "Ah great, perfect." "Thank you." "After 18 months as egg layers these birds become less productive, and if they weren't going with Jane, they'd soon be turned into cat food or chicken paste." "All right, flapper." "Not a lot of room for them, is there?" "No, it's a little bit tight but this is how caged eggs are produced, Jim." "And it's not just the eggs you're buying in a box of six eggs, it's all the stuff that goes into mayonnaise and..." "Yeah, 60% of the eggs from these birds go into processed foods - cakes, pastas, mayonnaise, as you say." "It's hot in here, it stinks, and the noise is unbelievable." "THOUSANDS OF CHICKENS CLUCKING" "It's nice to be getting them out, Jim, isn't it?" "It's lovely, isn't it?" "It's a rewarding job, this." "It is." "Hi, ladies." "Your turn." "You coming out?" "You coming out today?" "You lucky chickens." "Chickens can survive in cramped conditions." "They can live just about anywhere." "This is one of the reasons there are more of them in the world than any other bird." "After the dust and noise, it's a relief to get outside." "This is the first bit of daylight they've seen?" "It is, yes." "It's a whole new world out here for them." "You can see how pale her face is!" "Yes, like anyone that's been inside all their life, they'll have pale skin." "But now they're going to be re-homed." "Yeah, they are." "They've all got homes waiting for them which is fantastic." "I can't wait to see how these birds react to being in an open space for the first time." "The chickens' new owners will be arriving in the next couple of hours, so we'll get these girls out in the barn and let them adjust to life outside the cages." "Come on, girls." "This the first time they've been out in an environment like this, so it's going to be totally new to them and quite bewildering." "And already some of them are starting to peck around and have a scratch, and so I don't think it'll be too long before these guys get back to being proper chickens." "There you are." "The chickens quickly start scratching and foraging on the barn floor." "They're not sitting here, terrified, they're exploring." "Their natural behaviour appears almost instantly." "But one last thing we need to help them with are those claws." "Next stage, Jim, is a bit of toenail clipping." "Right, cos some of them have got pretty long nails, haven't they?" "Yes, they have." "They've been living on a wire floor for the last year, so there's nothing for them to naturally wear down the claws." "Right, so if I catch some up..." "Yes, please." "You'll do the cutting?" "I will." "Wow." "Oh, this one's like a witch." "Look at the claws on that one!" "She's been growing these all year." "They're real long claws." "She wouldn't be able to scratch around easily with nails that length." "It's a simple operation where I just clip that off." "She'll never need to have them done again." "As she becomes a free-range chicken she'll naturally keep them down." "She'll scratch around and keep her own toenails down." "Yeah, definitely." "Once we've clipped all their claws, our chickens will be ready for their new owners." "Jane has a waiting list of eager chicken keepers, and they get the nod when any new birds need a home." "And Jane checks that everyone taking the chickens is well prepared." "Have you ever had chickens?" "We have, years ago." "So you know how to handle them?" "Yes." "OK, that's fine." "Having seen these birds in battery cages, it's great to see them getting the chance to live as proper chickens." "There we go, little chicken." "You can go, too." "Brought every box in the house, haven't you?" "Even the cat basket!" "From cage to fur-lined cat basket." "What a lucky chicken you are." "Bye!" "Bye." "Bye." "There are some of Jane's chickens that can't be easily re-homed." "Some of them are injured and some are sick." "But one of them has a bit of strange problem." "This is Lloyd the cockerel." "Jane rescued him from a battery cage just two weeks ago." "Cockerels are not normally found in commercial hen houses," "But Lloyd had slipped in amongst the hens and no-one had noticed he wasn't laying any eggs." "We're about to introduce him to the girls in the top run." "And having never learnt from other cockerels or lived in a proper flock of chickens, it might be a bit confusing for him." "He's going to meet some new ladies." "Yeah." "It's his big moment, exciting time for him." "Is he going to spring into action?" "Yeah, I hope so." "Yes, yes!" "This is it!" "Lady time." "Right." "Jim, you put him down somewhere and let him do his stuff." "All right, Lloyd, here you go." "See what happens." "Here we are, look." "Have they ever seen a cockerel before?" "No." "So he's something completely different?" "He is, and they're all coming over to see what kind of specimen he is." "And they've never seen something with such a fine pair of wattles as he's got." "Lovely pair of wattles." "He's got lovely plumage, as well." "He has." "He's handsome." "He is, yeah." "Both the hens and Lloyd are a bit wary at first." "They're going to find it strange to begin with." "Come on, girls." "Come on." "Come and see what we've got for you today." "So what we've provided him with is basically a harem of ladies." "It is, yeah." "He's going to think he's got his birthday, Christmas and Easter all come together at once." "He's a little bit bewildered." "Ooh, is he hen-pecked?" "One of the girls is sort of challenging him there." "What's going on, Lloyd, eh?" "Lloyd isn't really acting like a proper cockerel." "Usually a rooster would get in here and dominate these hens." "He should be attracting the girls over for tit-bits and letting them have first go." "But no, he's eating all the food himself." "At the moment they're almost challenging him, there, look, real challenge." "Oh, now, look, look..." "Come on, Lloyd." "So she must be the dominant hen in this flock, but he's the cockerel." "Lloyd's got to stand up for himself." "He's taken aback, look." "He's like, "Hang on a minute," ""this is not meant to happen!" Come on, Lloyd, show us what you're made of." "So that was a bit embarrassing for him, because he just got beaten up by the hen in front of all the other hens." "He did, yeah." "He's not very butch, is he, at the moment?" "It's going to take him a couple of days to get over that." "Yeah, I think it will." "There's something else very strange about Lloyd." "Normally all cockerels would be killed at chick stage before getting near a battery farm." "So what's going on?" "Probably Lloyd either slipped the net or it could be that he actually started life as a hen." "What?" "And then changed into a into a cockerel?" "Yes, it does happen." "Incredible." "With the crow, the lot." "It's astounding to think that Lloyd may have started life as a female, but Jane tells me that she's seen this happen before." "Back in 2008 one of her hens started crowing, grew spurs, a cock's comb and wattles, and ended up a fully fledged cockerel." "George the hermaphrodite chicken became a tabloid sensation." "I really want to know if Lloyd is one of these rare sex change birds." "It would be amazing if he was, but how can a hen become a cockerel?" "This remarkable transformation can happen when one of the chicken's ovaries is damaged." "That causes a jump in testosterone making the hen grow new plumage, spurs, a wattle and comb." "Sometimes they even crow, but they can't reproduce." "Once Lloyd's settled down, Jane can take a few feathers off him and send them for DNA analysis." "Then we'll find out if he's all man, or a little bit of a lady." "Having never been with his mother or in a flock, it will take Lloyd some time to adapt." "Jane has another two new free-range boys, Bjorn and Benny, to put in with her hens." "Now we'll see how cockerels should behave towards their flock." "But first, we're going to have to catch them." "You go round that corner..." "Yep." "..I'll come in this way." "Right, so if I go round here and I move down towards you, you move in?" "Right, OK." "Good." "Right, fellas... if only they knew what we were trying to do for them." "I know!" "Bit more further down, bit more down, bit more down." "Come on, Jane." "Grab it, Jane!" "They're bloody fast, bloody fast!" "Too quick for us, Jim." "You got one?" "Yeah, got it." "OK, so these guys are going to have a really pleasant surprise." "Yeah, so how many girls have we got in there for them?" "Probably about 15, 20." "Right, so 15 girls to two cockerels." "That's not a bad ratio, is it?" "No, not too bad." "No." "Just hope these guys have got some manners and are gentle with the hens." "They're not used to active guys, like these." "Pop them straight down?" "Ready?" "OK, here we go." "There we go." "Ooh!" "Bjorn and Benny are quick to show who's boss." "They know how to handle a bunch of hens." "He's the one I think might do some of the jumping and he's looking at them in a certain way." "He's got that glint in his eye." "He has got that glint in his eye!" "And the cockerels do have a few tricks up their sleeve when it comes to attracting the ladies." "They do let them know when there's some particularly tasty titbits." "As they're rooting around, if the cockerels find something that's a particularly tasty morsel they won't eat it themselves, they'll make a little "tic tic tic" noise and attract the hens over." "Right." "That's obviously nice for the girls and gives the boys an opportunity to sort of..." "Yeah, because it's not a one-way road, is it?" "No." "The cockerels have picked some food up and keep dropping it for the hens..." "Yes. ..and when the hens get close enough..." "Yeah, they're in for the mount, they do their job." "Procreation." "When they get used to their surroundings, they should try and mount all these hens." "Yes, they would do, yes." "Spreading their genes as far as they can." "Yeah." "But as Bjorn and Benny strut their stuff, their presence has caused upset in the neighbouring run." "COCKEREL CROWS" "Jane's bantam cockerel, William, is not happy with love rivals moving in next door." "I mean he is beside himself." "We've collected all your best-looking hens and let these two strangers in." "Yes, he's not a happy cockerel this morning." "And he will defend his position here, as best as he can." "Even though, size-wise he's a lot smaller, he will do his utmost to see these two off." "He'll take on these two, even through the wire." "Yes, he would." "And that's exactly what happens." "It's a good thing there's a fence between them, otherwise there could be serious injuries." "When cocks fight, their wings go down and their ruffs go up like lions' manes, making them look bigger and more impressive." "All this because the position of top cockerel is at stake." "Cockerels can be pretty aggressive, and watching these two fight makes me think about why we might have domesticated chickens 8,000 years ago." "It might not all have been about eggs and meat." "People would have seen chickens fighting in the wild naturally and that would have appealed to our blood lust." "And maybe that's the reason why we took them in, in the first place." "Eventually they both back down." "Feathers may have been ruffled, but they still have their pride." "William will stay king on his side of the fence and warns Benny to stay away." "COCKEREL CROWS" "I'm going to leave the farm now and go off to Bristol University, where I've heard they've done some remarkable work with chickens." "Professor Christine Nicol, an expert in animal welfare, has studied exactly how hens teach their chicks." "Before chicks hatch, a hen and her youngsters are already communicating." "The chicks cheep to each other and the mother hen makes reassuring noises to let them know she's there." "The family bond is made long before they emerge from their shells." "Right, how are we getting on, how are the eggs?" "Yes, she's doing really well." "We think we've got at least one chick actually hatched already." "She's quite protective?" "She's definitely protective." "I see you've got your gloves on!" "So I'm going to give it a go, I'm just having a little look underneath." "She's not, she's not overly happy." "No, but that's fair enough." "I am..." "Look, oh, yeah!" "Look at that." "There, our first chick!" "Fantastic!" "She's obviously not going to be very pleased." "Can I have a look?" "Yeah." "Tiny little things, aren't they?" "Look at that." "Just beginning its life." "She really wants that one back." "Yeah, we'd better put it back." "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh." "Just want to put her back, that's it." "She's a good mum." "When the chicks hatch, their eyes are open, they're running around." "They're pretty independent and they're able to feed themselves as well?" "Yes." "These chicks, when they hatch, are very much ready to go." "So they hatch and they're able to do most of their behaviours almost straight away." "Chicks hatch fully feathered and mobile." "But their relationship with their mother is also important." "Professor Nicol has conducted a study showing that mother hens will actively teach their chicks and point out when they're doing something wrong." "Previously this behaviour of pointing out mistakes had only been observed in primates." "If a mother hen is trained to expect mealworms in a yellow bowl, when she sees her chicks eating from a red bowl, she will observe their behaviour as wrong and try to correct it." "She calls them away from it, pecks in the yellow bowl, and displays tit-bitting behaviour - picking up bits of food and dropping them." "Her aim is to attract the chicks to yellow." "But the chicks pay no attention at first." "She will also bill-wipe - rubbing her beak on the floor next to the yellow bowl - all to attract the chicks to eat from yellow." "She carries on calling and pecking and at last the chicks obey their mother and go to feed from the yellow bowl." "Although they know that the red bowl has mealworms in it, they reject their own experience and follow Mum." "Once the hen has communicated successfully with her chicks, she relaxes." "But can chickens learn new behaviour from humans?" "Back on Jane's farm, the students have had a few training sessions with their hens." "We wanted to see if they could accomplish a feat of memory and learning, to distinguish between different shapes." "Right, guys, how're you getting on?" "Yeah..." "Have you started to bond with your particular hen?" "Definitely." "You get to pick up the certain traits they come across." "Each of them have got their own individual personality." "Like this one is quite crazy, cos she just uses her feet for everything." "And what about your hen?" "This is Phyllis." "Hello, Phyllis." "She's had really good concentration from the start and doesn't wander off." "I love the idea of a chicken having a lot of concentration." "Yeah, she does." "That's fantastic." "But have they all picked it up, do you think?" "Over the period of the time that you've been training, have they got there yet?" "Yeah." "Are you confident that they're going to do it?" "Yeah." "OK well, shall we see?" "This is how the students trained the chickens." "First of all, they put live mealworms in a tray." "The chickens learn that the trays contain treats." "Then they covered the holes with paper so the chickens couldn't see the worms." "The chickens remembered that the tray contained a treat." "They quickly learned to peck through the paper to get to the tasty mealworms." "Then came the tricky stage." "They introduced shapes, and only put the worms under the shape they wanted the chickens to go for." "Let's have a look." "How did they get on?" "Let's have a look at yours." "Now, yours was just after circles." "Yes." "Now look at that..." "That's a good one, that's a good one, she got a star there." "Circle, circle, circle, circle... fantastic!" "She only got it wrong on one star!" "Yeah, that was her second to last so she only had more to go." "So these two, next to each other..." "She went like this, this, this." "That's amazing though, isn't it?" "!" "Yes." "Absolutely amazing." "I think she's come pretty far now." "She has, and what about yours?" "Pretty pleased with that!" "Cor!" "That is one clever chicken!" "Look at that." "In just three training sessions, the hens learned to recognise that they would only find worms under the symbol they were trained to go for." "Whether it was stars or circles." "The speed of chicken learning is exceptional." "And once they've learnt which shape to go for, they can get round the box in less than 40 seconds." "Well done, Pretty!" "Do you know what?" "I'm bowled over by Jane's ex-battery hens." "I know chickens will do anything for mealworms, but those birds weren't pecking at random - they'd learnt." "They knew that if they pecked at a certain shape they'd get a reward, and they went for those shapes immediately." "So I'm pretty impressed." "Chickens have been trained to do just about anything." "ARCHIVE:" "Would you believe a basketball-playing chicken?" "They learn faster than dogs and respond much more quickly." "Chickens are quick learners because they're ground-nesting birds." "Chicks can't fly or run fast, so from the moment they hatch, they have to be aware of everything around them, just to survive." "It's my last day on the farm and Jane's got the test results back for Lloyd, the reluctant cockerel." "And it turns out he's not a sex-changing hen after all." "Look, there he is." "Yeah." "Oh, he's looking better, isn't he?" "He's not doing too bad at all." "He looks more sure of himself now." "He does, now he knows the results." "His legs aren't good." "He's still a bit wobbly." "He's got that sort of comic walk, hasn't he, still?" "Yes, Ministry of Silly Walks." "But he's been in a cage, so it's going to take him time to sort of build his muscle tone up." "He's moving around a lot more." "His comb looks lovely and red." "He does, he's actually looking quite healthy." "And he's integrated with the girls really well." "He's learning to communicate with them better." "But has he integrated as just another chicken or has he integrated as a cockerel?" "You know, dominating the females, telling them where to go," ""Here's food," trying to mate with them..." "It's a halfway house, actually." "Is it?" "It is." "He's actually displaying some cockerel behaviours." "Right." "But they're not terribly strong." "For example if I throw down some of this food..." "Yeah." "Normally I would expect a cockerel to go "tutututut" to tell the other girls that there's something tasty." "He should communicate that there's food." "Yes." "But at the moment all he's doing is just eating it..." "On the other hand, he is actually trying his luck at mounting the girls." "Is he?" "Yes, he is." "He's tried once or twice." "So he's does the wing down, the little strutting dance?" "Beginning to." "His foreplay is a little bit weak." "Foreplay!" "But he has actually mounted one or two." "Poor old Lloyd, weak on the foreplay." "He's learning, though." "He's learning, he's learning." "When Lloyd arrived here, he had no idea how to behave as a cockerel." "It is instinctive wild behaviour, and is gradually coming back." "But the hens seem to like him." "And I think he is well on his way to becoming a proper cockerel." "We eat more of these birds than any other creature on the planet." "Their eggs are a staple in our diet." "But just because we can keep chickens in flocks of thousands, feed them anything and rely on them surviving doesn't mean they deserve any less respect." "Being on Jane's farm this week has made me look at chickens completely differently." "And if you think about it, despite human beings domesticating them for 8,000 years, most chickens could step back into the jungle tomorrow and survive quite happily without us, because beneath those familiar feathers still remains a wild and instinctive bird." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"