How to Speak Chicken: Why Your Chickens Do What They Do & Say What They Say

by Melissa Caughey

Best-selling author Melissa Caughey knows that backyard chickens are like any favorite pet — fun to spend time with and fascinating to observe. Her hours among the flock have resulted in this quirky, irresistible guide packed with firsthand insights into how chickens communicate and interact, use their senses to understand the world around them, and establish pecking order and roles within the flock. Combining her up-close observations with scientific findings and interviews with other chicken enthusiasts, Caughey answers unexpected questions such as Do chickens have names for each other? How do their eyes work? and How do chickens learn?

Genres: Nonfiction, Animals, Birds, Self Help, How To, Science, Nature

144 pages, Paperback

Published January 13, 2018

Reviews

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to Speak Chicken
Why Your Chickens Do What They Do & Say What They Say
by Melissa Caughey
What a joy of a book! This book has love just oozing out of it! There are lots of pictures, tons of great information on not only the communication of of feathered friends but so much more. These little guys are not bird brained after all. The wonderful and delightful stories are worth the money itself. The info, personal stories, the charming pictures, and so much more all stuffed into a big fluffy pile of love. It made me feel warm and happy all over reading this. I wanted to go make a coop and get chickens again. Thanks NetGalley and Storey Publishing for letting me read this awesome and caring book!

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
-Anatole France"

I enjoy chickens on several levels. Having grown up on a 'mixed farm', we usually had a dozen laying hens. It was fun to watch them pecking bugs on the blades of grass and scratching in the dirt. Not so much fun when running barefoot and finding that the chickens had ventured there beforehand leaving deposits.
One of my favourite chores was to collect the eggs. Sometimes the eggs would be warm when I reached under the chicken to get the eggs out of the nesting box.

The picture of the chicken on the cover attracted me to the book, HOW TO SPEAK CHICKEN. This short, easy to read book of 144 pages has many beautiful colourful photos and pictures of chickens and hens. There is a partial bibliography and a link to the author's website.
I know chickens have an inner eyelid, but was unfamiliar with the word "nictitating." Melissa Caughey writes, "Like us, chickens have an upper and a lower eyelid, but they also have an inner eyelid, or nictitating membrane, which folds into the corner of the eye near the beak. When a chicken blinks, the upper lid doesn't move like a human's. Instead the inner eyelid slides over the eyeball to clean away debris while the lower lid lifts to meet the upper lid."

Wanting to know more, I googled 'nictitating membrane' and found Wikipedia's definition. "The nictitating membrane (from Latin nictare, to blink) is a transparent or translucent third eyelid present in some animals that can be drawn across the eye for protection and to moisten it while maintaining vision."

I am in awe when I witness the miracle of life... the chick pecking its way out of the eggshell and the 'little balls of fluff' peeping and running around. Melissa Caughey uses a timeline, diagrams and pictures in her explanation and description of the development of the chick from day one to the twenty-first day when it hatches from the egg.
The writing was repetitive in the Advance Reader Copy provided to me. We learn through repetition, so the author may have written this book to inform and teach the novice or middle schoolers about chickens.
I would buy this book for the beautiful colourful photos of chickens and hens.
It would make a wonderful addition to school and public libraries and doctor and dental waiting rooms.
3.5 raised to 4 **** because of the beautiful glossy colour pictures and photos.

Thanks to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for an ARC of HOW TO SPEAK CHICKEN by Melissa Caughey. Please accept my apologies for taking quotes from the unfinished advance reader copy I was given.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

My neighbor found this book in a bag of books she bought at her church auction and knowing that I'll take up with anything "animal" she brought it to me. I don't know if she read it or not but she obviously thought that I was weird enough to appreciate it. My husband kept looking at me funny..funnier than usual...and shaking his head. But I learned that I might want to be careful what i say to the next chicken that I meet...outside of a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken that is. I learned in 144 pages that chickens are both amusing and practical as well as intelligent communicators ... if you are willing to learn their language. The author raises chickens so she probably has more insight into them than I ever could. Along with the host of animals that I grew up with as a kid was several dozen chickens ...complete with names. I believe that this author spends more time with her chickens that I did with mine since she diffidently has an understanding of the mind and brain of a chicken. She's studied their behavior both as an individual and a member of the flock and how they process the world around them as well as the emotions they show with one another. Interesting little book...not a best seller by any means but oddly attractive and will count in my 300 books that I said I would read this year on GoodReads. I didn't learn the answers to some of the questions that the description suggested might be offered but I was highly entertained... as was my husband. I'm finished with the book but he's still looking at me funny.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not called “the crazy chook lady” for nothing, so of course I absolutely had to read this book! After decades of keeping our own backyard chooks, who are a much loved part of our family, I have done a fair bit of reading on the subject and have quite a few “how to” chicken related books on my shelves. However, How to Speak Chicken is delightfully different. Instead of giving advice on keeping chickens, it delves into the subject of how chickens communicate, and how we can get more out of our flock if we are able to understand their language.

The author’s love for her flock shines through on every page, as she shares both her own insights as well as latest research findings about how intelligent chickens really are. I found it utterly fascinating, even though I had suspected that there is a lot more to these lovable creatures than we give them credit for. Did you know that chickens can remember up to 20 members of their flock, and have a unique call (or “name”) for each one of them, including you (once you have been accepted into their flock)? Can you tell when they are warning you of a perceived danger from the ground as opposed to danger from the air? Have you ever suspected that chickens can sleep with half of their brain still wide-awake and alert for danger? I didn’t, but ever since reading about chicken communication I have been a lot more attuned to the call of my own hens and how they “chat” with their sisters and members of our family. I watched in fascination as the new puppy was initially greeted with a “danger from ground” alert, but is now accepted with soft clucks as she sniffs around the chook pen.

If you are a chicken lover, or have a chicken lover in your midst, this delightful book would make a perfect Christmas present. The charming and uplifting pictures of various chickens provide a colourful backdrop to the interesting information contained in its pages. Despite being informative, the text is easy to read and devoid of the scientific lingo that tends to exclude some readers – this is a book that can be read and enjoyed by the whole family. Full of love for our feathered friends, How to Speak Chicken was both one of the most informative as well as uplifting books of the year for me – I loved it. So much that I have dominated a few lunchtime conversations with “did you know that chickens .....” Hopefully friends and family will either share my enthusiasm or learn to forgive me!

I highly recommend How to Speak Chicken to any chicken lover or anyone who is still sitting on the fence about them – apart from learning to appreciate the intelligence of these loveable backyard creatures, the fun and fascinating facts contained in the book will make you a star of any dinner conversation (just ask my family ;).

Thank you to Netgalley and Storey Publishing for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

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[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very enjoyable read with bright, colourful cheeky photos of chickens. The home flock kept by the author adopted her as one of them because she spent so much time with them, and they clucked and squawked to her in a way which she came to recognise as chicken language. They had separate alarm calls for danger on the ground or danger from the air, they had a greeting and a goodnight, and they even adapted a call to be the lady's name.

As well as behaviour of a free range flock, we get some history and modern science. When you see a few hens on a perch, the ones on the outsides of the row have each got one eye open to watch for predators, but half their brains are asleep. They have cones in their eyes to see four colours (we have only three), and one to tell them if light is increasing or decreasing. The author tested their memories and recounts puzzle-solving research experiments.

I would recommend this book to anyone keeping or thinking of keeping chickens. And to those just curious and looking for some new facts to delight others. The photos are so good they will cheer you up and the reading is not too heavy so a secondary school pupil should be fine with the book. As I have kept animals including cat families and horses I have no difficulty accepting that the author has researched and recorded accurately. Our cats say our names, so why wouldn't chickens name the most important figure in the flock's life. Enjoy!

I downloaded a copy from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book out to read because I’m planning to raise chickens as pets and for their eggs. How to Speak Chicken has helped me to understand them better. It covers a wide range of topics from eggs to hierarchy to scientific studies. It was really interesting.

Melissa, the author, did a great job writing it. It’s an easy and quick read with plenty of pictures. I learned so much more than what I had gathered from my Google searches. I am definitely grateful to have stumbled upon this book and plan on read her other book as well. Highly recommended!

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It looks like the end of the year is almost nothing but five star books for me. WooHoo!!

This book is no different. It was a really sweet and informative book about, of all things, chickens. I loved it.

This is what "Esther the Wonder Pig" SHOULD have been like. That book was a vegan screed that put my back up. THIS was a warm and loving look at chickens, how they all have their own personalities, how smart they are and the sociology of the flock, with and without roosters.

Not ONCE did the author say that we shouldn't eat chickens or that eating them was murder.

But her loving attitude and the way she wrote about the chickens in her flock, past and present, made me cry and vow to never eat chicken again!

I need to avoid all books about cows, sheep and goats, because I am running out of meat things I can eat, if I don't think about it too hard and ignore Jimminy Cricket on my shoulder...

This was a beautiful book, with really lush pictures, so clear that you can SEE the intelligence in the eyes of the chickens.

The author clearly loves her subject and she is able to pass that love and wonder on to the reader. This book was one of my top five this year and I highly recommend for all to read it. 5, feathery, sweet and warm, stars!

My thanks to NetGalley and Storey Publishing, LLC for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

[Jodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Einfach nur Wow! Ich habe mir dieses Buch für eine Challenge aus der Bibliothek geholt, mit der Hoffnung, meine Kindheitsängste bezüglich Hühnern etwas in den Griff zu bekommen. Wenn ich mehr über diese Tiere weiss, kann ich mich ihnen gegenüber vielleicht auch besser verhalten.

Das hat sich erfüllt. Und noch viel, viel mehr. Ich habe dermassen viel über Hühner, ihr Verhalten, ihre Sprache gelernt, ich bin noch immer hin und weg. Nie hätte ich gedacht, dass diese Vögel dermassen faszinierend sein können. Auf praktisch jeder Seite erlebte ich etwas Neues.

Dazu kommt eine liebevolle Aufmachung und das Lesevergnügnen war perfekt. Wow!

[Patrizia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it

[Mark Rosekelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

People really like this book. It was given to me as a gift because we are getting chickens in the spring. This book is not much better than a coffee table book. It has cute stories and colorful pictures but little information on actually raising a flock of chickens. If you want a light book that has lots of pretty pictures you may enjoy this book but if you are looking for real information, look elsewhere. Sorry for the poor rating.

[Alisa Kester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Little lighter on actual information than I wanted, but charming. And who doesn't love a book with chickens in it?

[McKinney Haney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this like I love my father babies!

[Natalie Scherck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable little book that made me love my girls even more. :)

[Angela Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful look into life with chickens

I have chickens, and while I knew much of the information in this book, it was refreshing to find someone who loves and appreciates them as I do. If you can’t understand why people love chickens, you must read this book!

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do you have backyard chickens?

If you have had backyard chickens for more than, oh, six months, most of the things in this book you have already discovered. It might have been a hard row to get there, but if you have spent at least six months with your backyard flock you know about all the different noises they make. You know the call of danger, just as you know the call of "there is some book food here. Really, come and eat it, I'll show you". Unless you just dumped the chickens in a run, and never go out to do anything with them other than feed and leave, you must have heard the calling they do when they wonder where the others are, or when they have laid an egg.

I bring this up, because I'm not sure who this book is written for. Any chicken owner will either learn through experience, or because they had to look certain things up, all the things that are in this book. Plus, this book is a little hippy-dippy. The author talks about noises that make her think the chickens have a name for her. OK.

I was hoping to learn something new. Instead, I was reading and saying to myself, well, that isn't true with my flock. It may be that I have an unusual flock, but my hens don't get to really get to pick and choose which rooster they mate with. They tend to gang-bang at times. So, while it is true that roosters will do a little dance, and try to appeal to the hens, there are also the rude ones, that don't care.

So, read this book if you want to find out what raising hens is like. But, as I've said, most of the information in this book will already be known by anyone with a flock, already.


Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

[Giovanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book!! I'm not new to chickens and it was still a wonderful read, and I learned more than I expected. She's included a bunch of science in here, as well as her own personal observations about chicken language. It's a quick read, I read it in a few days interrupted. And it's packed cover to cover with super interesting information.
I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to know something new and fascinating, but especially for chicken owners and people interested in getting chickens. You'll benefit from learning the information.

[GAL · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am taking everything I read with a grain of salt.

Interesting yes, scientific maybe. As a chicken owner I could relate somewhat to some of what she wrote, but a lot of it, to me, seems wishful. By that I mean she studied actions, listened to sounds and wished for the outcome. I looked, saw and heard the same things she described and came to a different conclusion...oh well...decent read.

[Perri · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun short book about chickens written by a woman whose heart belongs to her feathered flock. Anyone who keeps a flock or longs to will get a kick out of this and the lovely photographs are an added bonus.

[LG (A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll start by saying that I don't own chickens and am unlikely to ever own chickens. I read this primarily because animal communication interests me, and this looked like it would be a relatively quick and entertaining read.

This has lovely pictures and is certainly a quick read. It doesn't go into a lot of depth on anything - readers just get basic information on animal observation, chicken behavior and communication, and the emotional life of chickens. There are brief profiles of various backyard chicken keepers, and the author frequently mentions birds from her own flock. There's a tiny bit of info about egg development, but otherwise there's very little about chicken biology or development. This book is more about learning to connect with and appreciate chickens as individuals.

Although there's a brief mention that some people deal with aggressive roosters by "[adding them] to the soup pot" (65), it's pretty clear that this book is intended primarily for backyard chicken keepers who likely view their birds as pets. All mentions of specific aggressive birds end with them being rehomed.

One thing I wish the author had done in the backyard chicken keeper profiles was include labeled pictures of all the breeds mentioned as being in the keepers' flocks. True, I could look them up online, but this was otherwise such a well-illustrated book that the lack of breed photos was noticeable.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

[Chelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a new adopted chicken mom (I inherited them with my home), I have been devouring anything I can find to teach me about the new little lives that now depend on me. I assumed "How To Speak Chicken" was a metaphor, but I guess it's a sign that I've gone off the deep end already when I realized there were actually chapters on how to cluck and communicate with your chickens, and kept reading. A lot of this is about the emotional lives of chickens and their connections to humans, but I still learned a lot!

[Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just love this book—it’s delightful and each page is a new source of fun. Gorgeous pictures, practical advice, sweet & personal stories, and interesting information without bogging me down with facts. This is a book I’m sure to revisit time and again.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Friends and family often speak of the antics of their backyard chickens, so when this title came along, I was “all in”. This is a quick read filled with interesting facts, surprising chicken antics, quotes and good photos. Time well spent!

(As some others have noted, this is not a "how to" book.)

[Karen Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did you know that you can tell what color egg a hen will lay by looking at the color of her earlobe? Red earlobes usually mean brown eggs; whereas white earlobes mean white eggs. This and other amazing true facts about chickens can be found in this compact, colorful, nicely illustrated book. Other topics include the language of chickens, chicken terminology, chicken etiquette, anatomy of the chicken, inner workings of a fertilized chicken egg, and the brain function of a chicken. I found this book to be quite interesting and is a quick, easy read.

[Romina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Expected much more from a book with such raving reviews. This is more like a long blog post, not an actual book: it's too simple and superficial. The author makes some big claims, but clearly didn't do thorough research.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick, easy read shared with me from @lauraruss_gh as I prepare to become a chicken mom! Turns out I did not know a lot about chicken and though I know more now, still feel like I am unprepared.

[Danalisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man this was such a fun read!! Such a deviation from my norm. Loved learning about these sweet creatures

[Henry Hellstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much!! As a chicken owner it was very useful, but also changed how I view my flock!

[Keira Hardy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book about chickens!!!

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick and easy to read. A lot of information about chickens in general which is fun to learn

[Scott Colan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute book! The author does a great job helping me understand some of the things my girls do and that I'm not crazy.