The Best and Worst of Chickens!

[Bockbockcaboose]

Hi all. Hoping to get chickens this year, and alongside my research I'd like some tales. Whats the best thing about your chickens, and the worst?

Hilarious answers vvvv welcome 🐓

they are basically feathery dinosaurs....vicious, pecky, humourless little dinosaurs.

but they are as funny as fuck to watch and get to know

one of our traumatised all three children...between them they had saved and liberated a mouse from one of the cats. Mr Mousey escaped into the chicken run and the children watched proudly as he ran to safety and freedom
Their pride ended suddenly as a chicken pounced upon him, pecked him and swallowed him straight down and then ran about the run crowing triumphantly.

another one used to love to ride about on shoulders...ds2 in particular was her favourite, he'd cut about the garden like some sort of bizarre pirate with this hen gazing at him.

hah...cross posted about chicken and mice !

If you really want a laugh cook too much spaghetti and watch as they bicker and chase around with strands of it.

Your chickens all sound incredible...

Are rats an expected risk?

I don't think they are if you practise good hygiene, we have hanging feeders and take the food in at night. We have had chickens for two years and haven't had a rat problem (they tell me that if you have mice you don't have rats but not sure how true that is).

Ours go in the kitchen to eat cheese and grapes. They are fantastic pets,

They have eliminated our lawn,

Best already covered above by other posters. Worst is that they are cannibalistic little bastards. I went out one afternoon to check on ours and realised that one had inexplicably dropped dead behind one of the coops. Her "mates" had then tucked in and I could see her rib cage where they'd eaten her. Utterly revolting. Despatching them when they become ill is also not fun.

We had
Edwina
Betty
Mary
Keith
Babs
Ginger
Henrietta
Gina
Zazu
And Rocky.
Sadly all gone.

We got our first batch as a new family after the last French elections (we are in France) and named them after the party leaders kind of Macrone, Françoise, Marine (all white), Nicola, Fillone, and one I've forgotten.

The worst is when they die, sometimes rather slowly.

So a bit of grimness, then. We have cats and our house backs on to farmland... swings and roundabouts?

And yes rats come with chickens. Pretty much guaranteed.

Oh and don't think any sort of fence or wall will contain them....

@bloodywhitecat mine did that with a frog once.

@RandomMess I have a cat, fat lot of good she was!!

Oddly, the neighbourhood Tom started sitting on top of the roof staring down at the knawed hole where the rats were coming and going into my garage. I wondered wtf he was doing. Would sit on the roof for hours just staring. Then I found out why when I saw the hole and the rats! My god they can destroy. And the smell. Wow, disgusting.

And once the rat man came and laid poison (I don’t like it but the traps werent working) he said the rats run around as the ingested poison takes hold and they get disorientated and can die anywhere. I had to start keeping my cat in as I didn’t want her licking any poison off the dead rats on the grass.

They also took the packets of poison from one place to another. I found stashes of it and rat bodies in my greenhouse too. It wasn’t put in there by us. I was scared they may drop some and the cat would eat it.

The whole thing was awful. The chickens were nice though.

Hmmmm would a ferret get the rats but not the chickens?

To let them die slowly is cruel, you either need to learn or make friends with someone who can dispatch them humanely.
It is illegal in the UK to feed egg producing chickens scraps from the kitchen due to cross contamination from meat.
You need to look out for and treat red mite which they catch from other birds.
If the Avian influenza is in the UK you need to have somewhere indoors to keep chickens if defra declare it.
They will pick a fight with anything.
You can't bury them when they die as they are classed as farm animals so need to be properly disposed of.
They are vicious little sods that don't like welcoming new chickens to the flock
And holy crap do they poo.

But I love them.

Swinesinsleepingbags Thank you! Very good info about being classed as farm animals; I expect a few people wouldn't check that.

Update: coop was meant to arrive today, but person we were meant to be buying from couldn't fit it in their new van 🤦‍♀️ luckily the hens aren't arriving until the week after next...

But I'm doing it, peeps! I'm going to own chickens!!

KLAXONS

Coop is arriving todaaaaay!!

Coop is in place and chickens arrive TOMORRRROOOOW

but I think this is now a dormant thread.

How are the new hens, Bock?

@Bockbockcaboose
How are you getting on with your new chickens?

I've been yearning for some for years but not plucked up the courage...yet. Am seriously looking again.

Best: Chicken cuddles. We had a dozen ex-batt rescue hens, one loved to be cuddled and the other followed us around gently pecking us. We had a rescue rooster too. He was very handsome and would strut about on patrol all day long, but he was a coward really. My 2nd flock is almost all purebred hens and they don't have same wonky, extroverted personalities as my ex-batts.

Worst: Losing my rescue flock to a fox attack. Dead chick (see other thread).

Ahem. @Bockbockcaboose update please? With photos!

@Ninkanink

Ahem. *@Bockbockcaboose* update please? With photos!

I'm back! Also changed my name back, minus the capital B...

I got 3 chickens. Then I got 3 more. Then my neighbour smashed my back window in because she didn't like them

I still have 6 chickens and she paid for our window replacement.

What on earth...don't leave it at that...!!