The Benefits of Friendly Chickens
There are many reasons why backyard chicken keepers not only want but also need their chickens to be friendly. We’ve certainly found this over the years and it’s why we invest time in making sure our chickens want to spend time with us.
Imagine having a flock that runs away from you every time you enter their space. Now imagine spotting a problem with one particular hen in the flock e.g. dirty vent, swollen eye or a cut on their back. Your job is to catch that one particular hen in a group of hens that doesn’t want to be anywhere near you. Even if you do easily catch the chicken, once you have it, it’s not going to want to be in your arms for an examination or treatment.
Another reason to need your chickens to seek you out is to quickly return them to the safety of their designated area if they should escape. Our small flock lives in our orchard which is roughly half an acre and is surrounded by protective electric fencing. Once in a while one of the lighter breeds will climb one of the fruit trees and be blown off course when they try to fly out of the tree to ground level. Once they’re outside, they get very upset that they can’t easily get back over the electric fence to their home. Having friendly chickens means that returning them to their protective enclosure is made more straight forward.
To turn your chickens into friendly birds, there are three main elements that need to work together:
- Trust
- Patience
- Incentives
Trust
Ultimately, the goal is to earn the trust of your flock. Chickens by nature are not hunters but instead are the hunted in the animal kingdom. As a result, they are constantly on the lookout for danger. They treat everyone and everything with suspicion.
If you’re new to chicken keeping this can be very difficult to reconcile to your own expectations. You may be used to puppies or dogs that (in the main) can be encouraged to be around you fairly quickly. Dogs are hunters though, not the hunted so are less suspicious than a chicken can be and will be faster to trust once shown kindness.
There are some exceptions to the rule. Hens that have been significantly handled as youngsters, are more likely to trust a new human. Having said that, you might be surprised that trusting a new person is not automatic. Surely one human is the same as another human? Unfortunately, the answer is “no”. Chickens can recognise up to 100 different faces so they will know that you’re not the person that they have confidence in, but they will also know that at least one human has proven worthy of their trust. As a result, they will more easily come round to giving you their faith than chickens that haven’t been handled from a young age.
Patience
Alongside trust is the element of patience. Trust takes time to establish. Familiarity with you is key and this can take a great deal of patience.
This doesn’t mean that you need to schedule specific time to spend with your chickens over and above your commitments to work, family, friends or household chores. If you can double up any of these activities, this is the easiest way to achieve familiarity. This could be as simple as taking a chair into the area where the chickens are and having your morning coffee just sitting quietly with them. An alternative is to begin a routine daily poo pick on their coops if you don’t already. It will not only help to familiarise the chickens with you as their trusted carer, but it will also make their living quarters more appealing.
The more time you can spend with them, the better, but how much patience you need will depend on a number of factors.
Breed
Some breeds have a reputation for being docile and making excellent family pets. These include Brahmas, Orpingtons and Silkies but there are many more and it’s best to research which are appropriate for you and your home. Having a reputation for being docile is always helpful.
There are many breeds that are regarded as flighty such as Leghorns and Legbars. If you want to reduce the time it takes to gain the trust of your team, then it may be best to avoid these. We say “may be best” because in our experience these breeds, although very suspicious to begin with, can very quickly become the most curious and friendly. Provided your movements are slow and you are patient, they will be one of the first to jump onto your lap for fuss and treats.
Previous Environment
If the chickens that you obtain have come from an environment where their chicken keeper was not hands on with them, they will be very suspicious of you as a human. Familiarity with humans and even better, friendly humans will, in general, reduce the amount of time it takes for your chickens to transfer their allegiance to you. As we mentioned before, it’s not automatic as they can differentiate between faces, but if they have trusted once, they are more likely to trust again.
What that means in reality is that purchasing point of lay hens from very large hatcheries may not be the right route for you if patience is an issue. In general, these hens will not have had close human contact. They may have been hatched with hundreds of other chicks and contact is restricted to what is strictly necessary for practical reasons. Small breeders are more likely to have familiarised the youngsters with humans, but this isn’t always true so some research is always a good idea.
New Environment
You might think this is strange to add but it does make a difference. For example, if new young chickens are being brought into an established flock with an established pecking order, that will make it more difficult for you to gain their trust. Not only will they be suspicious of you, but they will have a close eye on the chickens surrounding them. The established flock will try to ensure that the new comers know their place.
If this is the case and you want them to be friendly towards you, the best way to do this (if at all practical) is to keep them separate until you have gained their trust. It separates the different anxieties of the new hens i.e. watching both you and the flock, and it may mean that once added to the established flock, the new comers will seek out your knee or even your shoulder as a place they can feel safe, away from the pecking order disputes
Incentives
The third element that can help increase the trust of the chickens and reduce the amount of time it takes (and hence your patience) to make friends with them, is incentives i.e. treats!
Treats are a fantastic tool in helping bring the chickens to you and help them understand that you are not a threat to them. We’re not advocating giving treats, treats and more treats to the chickens as that would compromise the correct levels of nutrition that the chickens would consume. Instead, we would let the chickens consume their scientifically formulated, nutritionally balanced pellets during the day and then late afternoon, we go to them with some treats.
Our normal regime for treats is wholewheat grains in warmer months and mixed corn in colder months, but when we are trying to establish a rapport, we will use wholewheat grains no matter the time of year. That’s because mixed corn is very fattening and we give it very sparingly in winter. It may be that as we try to establish trust, we need to give make slightly more treats available late in the day than normal and none of us want waddling and overweight chooks!
What we have found helpful is using a consistent container to take the treats into the chicken area. The container has become so familiar that if any of the chickens fly over the fence accidentally, we only have to get the container out, for them to run as fast as they can towards us.
In gaining the trust of the chickens, we begin by offering treats from our hand. If they won’t take them, we’ll scatter one or two on the ground so that chickens can get used to the fact that these are treats. Once they recognise them as treats, we’ll offer them from our hands so that the chickens have to come and get them if they want them. To start with, we’ll hold our hands out as far from our bodies as possible and gradually as they become more use to it, we’ll move our hands closer and closer to us. Eventually, the chickens will recognise there is no threat and will both run towards us and jump on our lap to get to the treats!
The Quicker Fix
There is a quick fix to all of this which is to hatch your own and handle the youngsters every day as they grow. That’s not without its challenges as you’ll not only get hens hatch, but cockerels too. You may get more cockerels than hens or more than you need, so a plan to deal with the cockerels, particularly when they mature, is sensible before you start. A bird that knows you all their life will grow up trusting you.
