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Rebecca Nordquist made sure to keep her initial experiments with chickens simple. After all, chickens are simple creatures, right? She now knows just how wrong that assumption was. Nordquist studies the welfare of farm animals and gets to see just how amazing and fun they really are on a daily basis.

"Most people tend to underestimate farm animals," she explains. "To be honest, I did the same at the start of my research project. We gave the chickens a simple task to test their short-term memory. The results were really surprising. They finished the task quickly and accurately, and actually outperformed pigs and rodents."

A few years ago, you'd invariably find Rebecca among farm animals in her overalls. These days, she spends most of her time behind her laptop, and leaves the experiments to her colleagues. She's still interested in the same thing: Studying the learning capacities and emotions of farm animals.

Getting to know animals

Rebecca hopes her research will ultimately improve the welfare of farm animals. "The conditions we raise young animals need to be changed to reflect their intelligence and learning capacity. First, though, we need to figure out what farm animals are actually capable of. We know so little about the behaviour and intelligence of farm animals, even though we raise hundreds of millions of them in the Netherlands. We can't genuinely improve animals' living conditions until we know more about them."

We know so little about the behaviour and intelligence of farm animals, even though we raise hundreds of millions of them in the Netherlands.

More lambs, more stress

Rebecca studied sheep to determine how much stress they experience. She compared ewes carrying singletons, twins and triplets. “The study found higher levels of cortisol – the stress hormone – in the wool of ewes carrying more than one lamb. Despite the study's relatively small scale, mothers do appear to have a harder time carrying multiple lambs. As it turns out, the amount of cortisol in a sheep's wool reflects the amount of stress they experience over longer periods of time. We previously observed a similar effect in sows with multiple piglets in a single litter."

Chickens with unique personalities

Having grown up in a city, Rebecca wound up researching farm animals by chance. Although she was already interested in animal behaviour as a behavioural biologist, she had always lived in a city and didn't have much affinity with farm animals. That all changed when she joined the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. "Chickens never cease to amaze me, for example. Most people tend to view a group of chickens as a unit. They don't see much difference between one chicken and the next. But I've really discovered just how unique they all are over the course of my work. Some chickens are eager to take part in the behavioural study and willingly stroll over to the research station. They hop to the front as if to say: ‘Pick me! Pick me!. Others are the opposite, and try to hide from us. They all have their own unique personality. That's something you only find out once you spend a lot of time around chickens."

Chickens all have their own unique personality. That's something you only find out once you spend a lot of time around them.

Making people think

Rebecca is dedicated to connecting science and broader society. She regularly answers questions from journalists and participates in outreach activities for children. "As a society, we're really far too removed from farm animals. People don't know much about farm animals and their living conditions, even though that's where their food comes from. I love sharing that information. Everyone can obviously make their own choices based on that information, but researchers have a duty to open up the debate and make people think."

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