Does a Chicken Prefer One Color of Feed over Another?

Overview

Objectives/Goals My project was to determine if Bantam Light Brahma chickens would prefer one color of crackeconrn over another. I believe that chickens will eat more orange and red corn than blue and green. Methods/Materials The materials I used were 4 Bantam Light Brahma chickens, cracked corn, bakery food dyes(sky blue, orange, leaf green, super red), a gram scale, 4 feed cups, 4 feed trays, 1 cup measure, large mixing bowl, 4 cookie sheets, 4 sheets wax paper, rubber gloves, and 4 poultry pans. I dyed 4 cups of each corn in each color and allowed it to dry. I measured 15 grams of each color of cracked corn and put them in individual feed cups and put them in the pens with the chickens every other morning. After each feeding the colored corn was reweighed to determine the amount of each color corn eaten. I ran this experiment every other day for a total of 6 test days. Results Overall the chickens preferred orange over red and blue over the green cracked coren. The difference in the preference between the orange and the red is small when considering the results for all four birds. None of the chickens like the blue corn and they liked the green even less than the blue. Conclusions/Discussion If I were to expand on this experiment I might consider running the experiment for a longer time period. Another possibility would be to run this experiment on baby chicks to see if they have the same response to the color feed.

Competition history

• CSEF 2009 Zoology · Entry J2421

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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