Here are some runners-up in the Hopping Variation in the Perched Chicken Competition. The competition was announced in mini-AIR 2007-09. The winner will be announced in mini-AIR 2007-10. The competition called for limericks that pertain to this published study:
“Ability of Laying Hens to Jump Between Perches: Individual Variation and the Effects of Perch Separation and Motivation on Behaviour,” G.B. Scott; B.O. Hughes, N.R. Lambe, and D. Waddington, British Poultry Science, vol. 40, no. 2, April 1, 1999, pp. 177-84.
INVESTIGATOR JOANNE LEARY:
If chickens were mathematickians
They’d calculate just like the dickens
The distance to perches
And how far their lurch is
To reach their desired positions.
INVESTIGATOR MIKE MCKINLAY:
The chicken who leaps from its perch
Lands with an incredible lurch
It looks for some food
Finds none but won?t brood,
It merely continues its search.
INVESTIGATOR ELVA SIMUNDSSON:
In the world of poultry elites
The losers of perch-jumping heats
Are sorted in pens
From Olympic class hens
and turned into fried-nugget treats
INVESTIGATOR CHRISTIAN FROSCHLIN:
A perched chicken sated and round,
Distrustfully ogled the ground:
“Why risk to be dropping
For meaningless hopping?
My plan to just sit here is sound!”
INVESTIGATOR MONICA SKIDMORE:
A chicken who jumps between perches
While hungry shows head bobs, and lurches.
But perch separations
Won’t get hen’s ovations.
One calls, while for short jumps it searches.
Investigator Mathew R Barley:
Those hens cleared a foot without puffing,
But poultrymen proved they were bluffing:
That gap is no bar,
They will jump twice as far
To avoid ending up full of stuffing.?
INVESTIGATOR DAVID MARPLES:
If you make chickens hungry and sad,
They will jump to a perch that’s less bad.
But make it too tough,
And they just have a huff,
And cluck that their keeper’s a cad.
INVESTIGATOR HERKY GOTTFRIED:
A chicken that wants to get plump
Will often be ready to jump
But one that’s well fed
Will not be misled —
It clucks but just sits on its rump.
INVESTIGATOR OLLIE ARBOGAST:
There once was a pullet named Josie,
Whose perch in the house wasn’t rosy.
She hopped up a peg
And soon laid an egg,
Because her new roost was so cozy.