05/20/2026
Look at this Chick-Enrichment!
Our ladies are enjoying some “facilitated foraging”.
Chickens are highly intelligent animals and require active mental stimulus to stay healthy, both mentally and physically! Here at Zoology, we approach this in a variety of ways.
Our “Environmental Enrichment Program” ensures they have consistent mental stimulus, and we started by making the areas they live in interesting – which encourages them to engage with their environment and exhibit natural chicken behaviors. We've also provided many roosting options, made of various materials and set to various heights to meet any preference the residents of our chicken yard may have! For a similar reason, multiple water and food sources are present.
Another way we enrich our chickens is with food, like this forage box. Chickens naturally engage in foraging behaviors, as seen here with the substrate kicking. Today we hid mealworms and small pieces of fruit inside the hay within this box so our chickens could do some foraging! We’ve also made puzzle feeders, which encourages our chickens to work their brains! It’s not uncommon to see them choose to work for their food over the pellets they have access to 24/7.
