Chickens have more taste buds than we thought! It is pretty clear that chickens love their food and now we can really understand why! No matter what I’ve put on their plate I have never seen a chicken turn it’s back and walk away from anything vaguely edible except for onion and citrus that is. Nonetheless It has always been thought that chickens have a low sense of taste. However new research has debunked this understanding and provided a fuller picture of how chickens, with many more taste buds crammed into their tiny mouths then thought, have a well-developed taste system which has been totally underestimated.
Chickens pop out of the egg with developed taste buds at the ready. Located in the beak and tongue they have an impact on chicken feeding behaviour from the first moment a chick starts to look for food. When a chick finds food, head shaking, beak wiping and movements of the beak and tongue can be observed as responses to taste. Scientists have yet to make the connection between what behaviour is a response to tasting what flavour but you will be pleased to know they are working on it! Interestingly enough Chickens don’t have a taste receptor for sweet. Their taste buds are focused on sour, umami, salty and bitter flavours. So don’t waste your time on “sweet treats” for your flock. However, they make up for this by having an extra sensitivity to water and fat, as in they taste and desire them strongly, especially water. This means that making sure your chickens have water that is absolutely fresh each day is an absolute must. No more just topping up a bowl of stale water! clean the bowl and replace the water daily at the very least. They will love it. Also it seems that umami flavours are their thing and they have very strong reactions to bitter flavours, but can tolerate sour flavours better than us mammals. So lovely meaty and earthy tasting food will boost their morale and pleasure. Our hens love prawn heads, chop bones, milk curds (waste from making Lactobacillus cultures for the veggie patch) and the fatty remains in the roasting pan from Sunday roast lamb. These are highly umami foods so no wonder. However these are treats and shouldn’t detract from or replace their regular 18% protein diet, which is essential for egg production.
When you think about it feeding is a very important part of poultry welfare so it makes sense really that chickens have a highly developed sense of taste as a great deal of their pleasure in life is around finding, sharing and consuming food, and yes, it is certainly worth asking if our hens, are really so different from ourselves?
In our next blogpost we will look at a new CSIRO study showing that the physical form of feed contributes a great deal to preventing or treating welfare and health conditions and, as such, can help the poultry keeper manage and improve the welfare of their flock. The study also shows that housing and flock management systems can greatly alter the nutritional needs of chickens. We will explore the implications of this study on backyard and urban chicken keepers and develop ways we can use the research to create a better life for our laying flocks.
The Articles
Liu HX, Rajapaksha P, Wang Z, Kramer NE, Marshall BJ. An Update on the Sense of Taste in Chickens: A Better Developed System than Previously Appreciated. J Nutr Food Sci. 2018;8(2):686. doi: 10.4172/2155-9600.1000686. Epub 2018 Mar 31. PMID: 29770259; PMCID: PMC5951165.
Bryden W. L., Li X., Ruhnke I., Zhang D., Shini S. (2021) Nutrition, feeding and laying hen welfare. Animal Production Science 61, 893-914. https://doi.org/10.1071/AN20396
