We write about chickens, carefully
Cluckology is a small independent publication. This page explains who we are, how we check what we publish, and how the site pays for itself.
What this site is
Cluckology publishes plain-English explanations of what is actually known about the domestic chicken — its cognition, its anatomy, its 3,500-year domestication story and the genetics behind a blue eggshell. There is a great deal of published research on Gallus gallus domesticus, much of it genuinely surprising, and very little of it written for people who are not already ethologists.
Alongside the science we publish original game design features. Chicken Road and Chicken Road 2 are arcade concepts we wrote and illustrated ourselves, purely because the oldest joke in English never explains the interesting part.
Who writes it
The site is produced by a two-person editorial team with backgrounds in science writing and small-flock keeping, working with freelance illustrators. We are not a veterinary practice, an agricultural consultancy or a retailer, and we do not sell birds, feed, equipment or courses.
If something here is wrong, we want to hear about it. Corrections go to corrections@trafficstacklynx.net and we amend the page with a dated note rather than quietly editing it.
How we research and fact-check
Every factual claim on the site has to trace back to a source we can name. In practice that means peer-reviewed animal-behaviour and veterinary literature first, breed standards from national poultry associations second, and reputable agricultural extension services third. Where a claim is contested we say so in the text instead of picking the more entertaining version.
The recurring sources behind the material on our landing page are:
- Behavioural and cognitive research on domestic fowl published in Animal Behaviour, Animal Cognition and Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
- Schjelderup-Ebbe's original 1921 work on social ranking in hens, the origin of the phrase "pecking order".
- The 2007 Science report on collagen sequences recovered from Tyrannosaurus rex and their similarity to chicken.
- Research on circadian control of crowing in roosters, including the 2013 work showing crowing persists under constant dim light.
- Breed descriptions cross-checked against the American Poultry Association's Standard of Perfection and the Poultry Club of Great Britain's breed standards.
- Eggshell pigmentation chemistry from avian reproduction literature on biliverdin and protoporphyrin deposition.
We deliberately avoid citing other listicles. If a fact only exists on content farms and cannot be traced to a primary source, it does not go on the site — which is why you will not find the claim about chickens being able to fly for a mile anywhere here.
How the site is funded
Cluckology is free to read and has no paywall, no membership tier and no account system. It is funded entirely by display advertising, including Google advertising products, and we are transparent about what that means in practice:
- Advertising slots are visually separated from editorial content and labelled. We do not publish native advertising dressed as an article.
- Advertisers have no sight of, or influence over, what we publish. There is no commercial relationship between an ad appearing on a page and the content of that page.
- Advertising and analytics cookies remain switched off until a visitor consents. See the cookie policy for the full list.
- We do not run pop-unders, auto-playing audio, interstitials that block the article, or anything designed to be mistaken for a system dialog.
What we will not publish
A short list, because it defines the site as much as the topics we cover: no medical or veterinary advice, no gambling or wagering content of any kind, no adult material, no scraped or AI-generated filler passed off as reporting, and no health claims about eggs or poultry products that we cannot source.
The Chicken Road features are clearly signposted as original concepts rather than products for sale, on the landing page and again in our terms of use.
Accessibility
The site is built to WCAG 2.1 AA as a baseline: keyboard-navigable throughout, visible focus states, text contrast checked against its background, every meaningful image given alternative text, and all motion disabled automatically for visitors who set prefers-reduced-motion. If you hit a barrier, tell us and we will treat it as a bug.
Get in touch
General enquiries, corrections, permissions and press requests all go through the contact page, or directly to hello@trafficstacklynx.net. We answer within two working days.