This pet chicken from B.C. is now a Guinness World Record holder

Lacey may look like just another pet chicken on Emily Carrington’s B.C. property. But she has a title her coop mates don’t: Guinness World Record holder.

Lacey may look like just another pet chicken on Emily Carrington’s B.C. property. But she has a title her coop mates don’t: Guinness World Record holder.

Carrington, who is a veterinarian and lives on Gabriola Island, began teaching Lacey and her other chickens how to identify simple letters and shapes last year, and found them to be quick learners.

“If I present two choices in front of them, they walk over and they pick the one that I’ve taught them to peck at, and they ignore the other ones,” said Carrington, who added she rewards a correct answer with a bit of grain, bread or fruit.

After teaching her chickens to pick out letters of the alphabet, she contacted staff at the Guinness Book of World Records about competing for the title of most tricks performed by a chicken. And she was given the go-ahead to bring in independent witnesses and videographers to document the attempt in early April.

“First of all, I thought the record would be fun to do. But mostly, its way to present the chicken – who gets kind of a bum rap in a lot of ways – this prize for being really, really good at something that maybe people didn’t know they could do at all,” said Carrington.

On testing day, Lacey managed to correctly pick six consecutive letters.

“So I ran two or three chickens through the series of tricks, and it just happened on that day Lacey was a little bit faster, and she was a little more accurate than the others,” said Carrington. “She’s a lovely little chicken, but she’s not really different from the others or any other chicken. And all chickens probably have the ability to do these things.”