Today's Wall Street Journal has a front page feature about researchers attempting to interpret "Chicken Speech". The Georgia Institute of Technology is recording inside chicken houses in an attempt to detect when a chicken is sick by a difference in it's 'conversation'. Discovering illness quickly is the goal.

They have thousands of hours of recordings. The researchers are familiar with mathematical equations, but have had to furn to old farm hands to master a lexicon of chicken sounds. It seems happy chickens (Marilyn Sue's, no doubt) are gregarious, communicating in variations of clucks, trills and coos. Worried chickens are 'deadly quiet'. Crowded chickens squawk about it. A sick chicken emits snicks, rales, and hissy, clicky noises.

Another idea from the Georgia Tech researchers is a type of Roomba that could roam a chicken house, recording audio and video -- and picking up the stray egg. Ah, science!

We don't subscribe to the Journal, but that's the paper that was delivered to us this morning at 6:30 a.m. -- instead of the Chicago Tribune that never did arrive. (I'll rant about that in another thread.)