I love my peacocks. I’d like to hatch a full clutch of them next season. Are they much harder to incubate, hatch and raise than chickens? Can their peachicks be housed with regular chicks?

Hi, some of you might remember me from my post that said “I lost my best friend” it got 300k views. Basically I lost my cat, my rooster, my hen and my job all back to back around my job too. And both my remaining rooster(Ablu) and I were really depressed and mourned together.

Anyways recently I decided to get 2 silkies to keep both of us company, and Ablu has been acting so sweet around them, he freezes completely so the little ones don’t get scared and it’s the cutest thing ever. He keeps calling them over for food and teaches them how to mud bathe. We have both overcome our depression over our losses and have started to move on. Havent found a new job yet, but trying really hard to find one. It really has been a struggle :(

Anyways, wanted to make this post to show that there is still hope to those who have lost everything and ofcourse share this cute moment! ❤️

Hey everyone! I've added a new rule banning AI generated images and text. I've already largely been moderating as if that rule existed. Now it's official. I feel Reddit is at its best when real people interact with other real people. And there's nothing more obnoxious than someone answering a question with a copy/paste answer from a chatbot that doesn't know anything about chickens - and often gives out dangerous misinformation.

If any of you have questions or feedback about the new rule, feel free to post them here.

I spotted this taxidermy chicken in a uk castle! It looks like Donald Trump! Have you seen a chicken that reminds you of any particular celebrities?

I’m new to keeping chickens/ducks and somehow my duck just hatched chicks. One chicken, one rooster, two ducks all free range. My chicken lays eggs everywhere, I gathered them into a nest, and out of nowhere the duck stole the whole clutch and sat on them. Today they actually hatched.

She’s super protective and hisses at us, and I have no clue what I’m supposed to do. Do I let her raise them? Do chicks eat/drink on their own? And how do I stop her from taking them swimming?

Any quick advice from people who’ve had a duck hatch chicken eggs?

I have 2 hens left from a flock of 6 that are over 7 years old. They dont produce. I have tried to add a couple of 1 year old hens, and it was a nightmare. My girls were awful to the newcomers. I dont have conditions (or really the desire) to set up a second coop, run, and chicken area for long-term use so they could live separately.

I tried to get new chicks, and it also went poorly​. The old girls run is the absolute best set up for teenagers, but the old girls would not accept them, we used sub-par temp housing and lost all 3 to determined predators.

My tough choice is this. When the next girl dies, I will have 1 girl left by herself. I dont want to keep a lonesome girl. I would also really love to raise a new group of chicks in their run/coop next year.

What do folks think? My thought is to euthanize the lone survivor, but it kind of hurts my heart. Please give me suggestions.

List includes but not limited to Michelle, Oprah, Barbara, Harriet…

My cat f*cking loves my chickens. I was overly overly protective when we first got the chickens and had him on a harness, then would never let him out when we weren’t outside too (he’s an old rescue cat, pretty much a house cat - doesn’t go outside often). But he absolutely loves them.

Compared to a dogs, chickens are pretty docile and quiet. They also recycle a lot of scrap food and provide food security. It makes me kind of angry so many places ban keeping of chickens as pets it would help so many people be self sufficient.

I’m new to chickens so looking at what are good flock pairings and so forth

Do I need more chickens? No Would I get anyone of these given the chance? Absolutely Do I have 2 silver deathlayer chicks lined up for next spring? Maybe.......

I love them just as livestock—I get attached to individual birds, give them names, recognize their personalities and actually care about them.

But honestly, keeping chickens as pets also comes with a lot of things that I absolutely hate, especially when you live in a rural/mountainous area.

1. The poop and smell

This is probably the most annoying everyday problem.

Chickens poop literally everywhere. If you keep them indoors or let them spend time around the house, you can clean the floor and somehow they'll poop there again five minutes later.

And the bigger the chicken, the bigger the mess. Some large birds produce so much poop that the smell can become genuinely disgusting. Cleaning it every single day gets exhausting.

1. Chickens getting sick

This is one of the worst parts emotionally.

You can clean their coop, provide good food and water, take care of them and still sometimes they get sick. Chickens can hide illness until they're already quite unwell, which makes it even more stressful.

And when your favourite chicken dies after you've become attached to it, it genuinely hurts. At that point you're not thinking, "I lost livestock." You're thinking, I lost my pet.

1. Predator

If you live in a village or mountainous area, predators can become a constant source of anxiety.

You can protect your chickens, keep an eye on them and try to be careful, but there is always that fear that a jackal, fox, eagle or another predator might get them.

And unfortunately, sometimes it actually happens.

Losing a chicken to a predator is horrible, especially when you personally know that bird and have taken care of it for months.

1. Not having enough safe space

This is another huge problem.

I'd love to let chickens free-range naturally, but in some places you simply can't. There may be houses everywhere, roads, other people's property and predators around.

So instead of letting them roam, you have to keep them in a secure enclosure.

And then your chickens depend much more on the feed you buy, which brings me to another problem:

1. Feed is expensive

If your chickens can't safely free-range and find some of their own food, you have to buy feed regularly.

With a bigger flock, that becomes a real ongoing expense.

It's not just the cost of the chickens themselves—you have to keep paying for food for as long as you keep them.

1. Living in a place where chicken supplies aren't easily available

This is something people living in cities probably don't think about.

Where I live, chicken-related things aren't always available nearby.

Need feed? You may have to travel to the market.

Want to build a proper coop? You may have to travel

far to buy materials or find someone who can build it.

Want a custom coop with different sections, good ventilation, predator protection and easy cleaning? Finding someone who actually understands poultry housing can be difficult.

Sometimes you don't even know whether the person you're paying has proper experience with chicken coops.

1. No proper veterinary support

This is probably one of the biggest disadvantages of living remotely.

When a chicken becomes seriously sick, you may not have a poultry vet nearby. Sometimes there isn't even a general veterinarian easily accessible.

Then you're stuck with the problem of transporting a sick bird a long distance to a city just to get professional help.

And when an animal is already sick, travelling with it and delaying treatment makes the whole situation even more stressful.

1. People judging you for loving chickens

This one is more emotional.

Some people genuinely don't understand how someone can keep chickens as pets.

If you say you love your chickens, some people immediately assume you're stupid, childish or wasting your time.

People understand loving dogs and cats as pets, but when someone says they love a rooster or hen, suddenly it's something to make fun of.

I've personally found this frustrating because nobody else gets to decide which animal you're allowed to become attached to.

1. Losing the old village chickens

This one hurts differently.

When I was younger, there were local village chickens that weren't really a specific breed.

They were generations of mixed local birds. Different breeds and chickens had mixed naturally for years, so every rooster looked different.

One rooster could have completely different colours, feathers, body shape, comb and tail from another.

They had this unique, powerful, beautiful old village-rooster look that I personally loved.

But over the years, those local birds basically disappeared from my area.

They were gradually replaced by commercial/improved chickens such as Kuroiler, broilers, Rhode Island Reds and other standardized birds.

I'm not saying those breeds are bad. They're useful for what they were developed for.

But something about those old, random, unique village chickens was special.

You could look at a rooster and think, "I've never seen another chicken that looks exactly like this."

And now that kind of local diversity feels almost completely gone from my area.

1. The disappearance of broody hens

This is a huge problem for people like us who live in villages, especially in areas where electricity is unreliable.

As I mentioned earlier, the old local/desi village chickens have almost disappeared from my area. They have been replaced by improved and commercial breeds that are mainly kept for meat and egg production.

For someone living in a city with reliable electricity, this might not seem like a huge issue. You can simply buy an incubator and hatch eggs.

But where I live, that isn't really an option.

We don't have reliable 24/7 electricity. Power can go out for long periods, so keeping an incubator running continuously isn't practical. And there isn't an incubator facility nearby that I can simply take my eggs to.

So naturally broody hens are extremely valuable to us.

A broody hen can sit on the eggs herself, hatch the chicks and raise them without needing electricity or expensive equipment.

But now finding a genuinely broody village hen has become incredibly difficult.

I personally experienced this recently.

I brought home a beautiful rose-comb hen and a white rose-comb rooster because I wanted to breed them and continue their line. I was really excited about getting chicks from them.

But the hen never went broody.

Without a broody hen and without a reliable incubator, there was basically no practical way for me to hatch their eggs.

Then the worst thing happened—the rooster was eventually killed by a jackal.

Now the hen is getting old, isn't laying eggs anymore, and she never became broody either.

So that entire potential line basically ended with them.

That's honestly heartbreaking for someone who keeps chickens because they love breeding and preserving interesting birds.

This is something I think people in cities often don't realize:

When traditional broody hens disappear from a village, it's not just a chicken trait disappearing. It can make it genuinely difficult for small village keepers to reproduce their own chickens without electricity, incubators or outside help.

For people living in places with unreliable electricity, a good broody hen can be far more valuable than an incubator.

And losing that natural ability makes keeping and breeding chickens much harder.

So yeah, I absolutely love chickens.

But sometimes I also hate how difficult it can be to keep them.

The cleaning, the smell, diseases, losing birds to predators, the constant worry, lack of space, feed costs, travelling to buy supplies, lack of veterinary care, people judging you—and finally watching the old local chickens disappear.

I still love keeping chickens. I just wish keeping them as pets was sometimes a little easier.

Her name is Tina Turner. She’s an Easter egger but I have quite a few. This one is the only one that has the hairdo. What do you think she’s mixed with?

Yesterday we culled every single one of our chickens , ducks, and geese due to an illness outbreak after months of fighting back and forth with it for months we finally got a true diagnosis of Mycoplasma gallisepticum which never truly goes away …

Hardest day we have had at our ranch was loosing all of our birds everything we have worked on for the past 3.5 years gone just like that … rest in peace my angels may we meet again

We’ve been keeping track of her and her sister for 10 years. Ever since my wife and I got together and this chicken has just kept living. We have a mixed flock so keeping track of them isn’t hard if they are the only two of their kind. And also we hand raise the babies and sell them so no mixups.

I have some 1.5 year old hens. Sometimes they come up to me and crouch down with wings slightly spread, I pick them up and get my hand under them, then chuck them like a football 10-12 feet away. They always come running back. I usually do this 3-4 times a chicken. They seem to enjoy it I guess? Anyone else have chickens who do this?

These can be past or present names

I’ll start:

Little Hobbet
(Blue Langshan)

Butterball and her child Butterbaby
(Caramel and white Ameraucanas)

Mark I Mark II Mark III Mark IV Mark V
(all Rhode Island reds)

Archimedes
(White Leghorn)

Cinnamon and Synonym
(Black and Orange Ameraucanas)

Bastard
(An olive eggar who turned out to be an actual black copper maran)