HenBox

Conor Houghton and Pete Bennett

Hens are interesting animals, full of personality and highly social. They are also surprisingly mean; they maintain a strict “pecking order” and will enforce it even when it doesn’t seem necessary; a high rank chicken with drive a low one away from a food source even when food is plentiful. Backyard hen keeping is a common hobby in this country, lots of people keep hens and the aim of this project is to build consider how a citizen science approach could be used to study the social behaviour of hens by designing a “henbox”; an interactive feeder capable of logging which hens are using the feeder and how this is affected by different social manipulations. This is a project that would suit someone who likes watching animals and messing around with hardware.