What Chickens Can and Can’t Taste

Taste buds determine what chickens can and can’t taste, which in turn determines what a chicken prefers to eat. Taste buds therefore have an important impact on a chicken’s health and productivity.

Until 1904, researchers believed birds didn’t have any taste buds. By 1957 they had decided that chickens do, indeed, have taste buds, based on what they will or won’t eat. But academicians still believed a chicken’s sense of taste is not as well developed as that of humans.

In 1985 Israeli researchers identified 316 taste buds in broilers. That number stuck until 2016, when a team of researchers at the University of Georgia used modern technology to identify 767 taste buds in a chicken’s mouth.

Compared to Humans

In many ways, a chicken’s taste buds differ from those of a human. For one thing, humans have between 3,000 and 10,000 taste buds, most of which are on the tongue. A chicken’s 767 taste buds are mostly in the roof and back of the mouth, which is probably why it took so long to find them. Even though a human has a greater number of total taste buds, a chicken has a greater proportion relative to the size of its mouth.

A chicken’s taste buds are egg shape. A human’s taste buds are, well, bud shape — globular and coming to a point, like a plant bud.

A chickens taste buds cluster around the salivary gland openings. The exact number of buds, and their clustering, varies with breed and gender.

As in humans, the number of taste buds in chickens also varies with age, increasing during early growth, then decreasing with advancing age. The dietary preferences of chickens, as in people, are therefore influenced by what they are fed when young and still receptive to different flavors.

In both chickens and humans, taste buds are constantly being replenished. But the turnover in chickens (every 3 to 4 days) is quicker than in humans (7 to 14 days).

What Chickens Can Taste

Taste buds identify 5 different taste sensations: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savory (also called umami). Compared to humans, chickens are more sensitive to bitter flavors, which is why bitter things are sometimes used to discourage feather picking.

Chickens are less sensitive than humans to sour flavors. And they are far less sensitive to salt, and even less sensitive to sweet. Chickens apparently have no sweet taste receptors in their mouths, yet some chickens favor sugar and other sweet simple carbohydrates.

A possible sixth taste sensation, fat, remains controversial. Evidence indicates that chickens have receptors for tasting fat. Another big question is exactly how any animal detects the taste of calcium, which is shaping up to be yet another addition to the Big Five.

Individual chickens, as in humans, have definite food preferences. Just scatter some mixed-grain scratch and you’ll see some chickens picking out one thing, while others gobble down something else.

In both chickens and humans, the sense of taste changes according to nutritional needs. A dietary deficiency, for example, can alter a chicken’s taste sensitivity, and therefore its eating preferences.

Given the opportunity, chickens make nutritious choices based on their current needs. You might notice, for instance, that the coop’s calcium supplement hopper empties faster when hens are laying their best.

So it turns out chickens have a highly developed sense of taste. It’s just that, compared to humans and other mammals, what chickens can and can’t taste is just different.