No Love

Depends on your perspective. My chickens are companion animals that happen to lay eggs. They sit in my lap, enjoy being pets, and are happy to come running to me. It all boils down to how you treat them. Treat them like the sentient, affectionate beings they are, and they will be life-long snuggly pets.
 
So, @Alexandra33
and anyone else, would you say that (other than treats) you did anything with them when they were little that helped them be more tame and friendly once they got over the terrible teens?  The reason I ask is that I just got 4 little girls who are around 5 weeks old.  They're two Dark Cornish and two black ones which may be either Black Star or Australorp.  The guy who sold them to me had both and wasn't sure which was which at this young age. 

I still consider myself a newbie.  I've had my little flock for about 5 years and now am down to one hen, and that's why I finally got some new girls.  My original girls were around 16 weeks or so when I first got them, so I've never been through the chick stage.  They were all BOs.  They were reasonably friendly, some I could pick up, others I had to wait until evening when they were drowsy on their roost if I needed to do anything with them.  None were ever cuddly or lap-sitters.  I consider my girls to be pets.  We hand-fed them treats, talked to them, etc, and they'd  follow us around when they'd be out free-ranging.  Sometimes they'd peck at our legs if they wanted something.  I loved them all and was okay with their degree of friendliness but I've always been curious about the really cuddly friendly ones.  I was wondering if I should be doing more with my little girls.  I'm basically just hanging with them, giving them treats and all, letting them settle (I've only had them a few days now.)  If I need to pick one up they all pretty well freak out and I hate to do that so I was just giving it time.  Which sounds like what pretty much everyone is saying, but is there anything else?  Is it nature or nurture?  Anybody?


MEALWORMS. Every chicken big or small, as long as it has a beak, will be your best bud for mealworms ;)
 
I am very much dedicated to hygiene. (I wash my hands every time I have touched any of our animals [chickens, cats, or dogs], door knobs, or faucets, before I touch my face or handle food. I also wash my hands at numerous other occasions, and we disinfect door knobs, faucets, and computer keyboards on a regular basis..)

However, I must say that when I grew up, in Germany, during WWII and the years following, hygiene wasn't up to today's standards,  and our chickens were pets. They were actually my first pets (as there wasn't enough food to feed a cat), and they got handled a lot.  

I never got sick as a result from handling our chickens, who liked to be picked up and carried. (I had them trained to spread their "elbows" on my command "duck duck!" for easier pick-up.) After the end of a day's work, my grandmother would rest on a chair, and the chickens would line up to get onto my grandmother's lap to get their fluffy behinds massaged, which, I must admit, were occasionally covered with lice. (I don't think that there was any suitable insecticide available at the time. Several years after the war, DDT became available. I don't know whether it was used on our chickens and they survived it. I only know that friends treated a flea-covered cat, they had recently adopted, with DDT, and the poor thing died a horrible death.) 

None of my family members, who all handled chickens and none of whom adhered to hygiene rules too much, ever came down with any illness that could be blamed on handling chickens.

I have, meanwhile, read several books on germs and hygiene, and found that washing my hands about 50x a day is still not enough to avoid all dangers from household germs, but greatly reduces these dangers. I am an advocate for adhering to hygiene rules (with or without handling chickens), but I would consider it an overkill to refrain from treating chickens as pets because of fear of contracting illnesses. 

We have obtained baby chicks, last spring, which have just started laying eggs. We consider these chickens pets, and they love to come onto our laps and also to sit on our shoulders. (Unfortunately, they, so far, don't like to be picked up. I also have not yet accomplished to teach them "duck duck!".) I use extra garden/chicken-yard shoes when I enter any of the chickens' residences. I check my clothes for "accidents" after close contact with the chickens, and I wash my hair when our chickens got into it. Thorough hand-washing is a no-brainer anyway.

The world is filled with pathogens. Avoiding animals is not the answer to stay safe. Hygiene is. (The danger to contract a serious illness from a human is much higher than to contract any illness from an animal.) Yet no matter what one does, germs cannot and should not ever be avoided 100%. There is always a remaining risk.

There remains the danger of bird flu, which we take very seriously. (I have suffered 10 pneumonias and numerous other serious respiratory infections throughout life, most of them during times when we had no chickens. Any new respiratory infection, of whatever source, could be my last one.) Bird flu is a danger to all bird keepers, no matter whether or not they treat their chickens (and other birds) as pets. Luckily, there is a good chance to hear about bird flu from the media before a pandemic will hit one's own chickens. So bird-owners can take precautions (best before any bird flu erupts anywhere on our globe).

We have automatized feeding and watering, installing devices from outside. In case bird flu hit our area, we could care for our chickens without entering their predator-safe enclosures. (They have a winter residence, near the house, with a small run, and a summer residence, farther away from the house, which a huge run.) Mind you, the manure would pile up, but this would probably be the lesser of two evils. If bad came to worse, we could enter with rubber boots, gas masks, and hazmat suits (which we own) and go through a complicated disinfection procedure, after leaving the enclosure.

If you are afraid of contracting illness from your chickens (which, definitely, is a possibility), make sure to take the proper precautions. But don't overdo it. Always keep in mind: Veterinarians are constantly exposed to zoonotic pathogens, and they haven't become extinct yet, even though most of them do not practice hygiene as much as I do. :)


Funny that you mention hygiene. It's now becoming apparent thatvwecare not getting ENOUGH germs and ourvkids' immunity is suffering from it. More germs=more opportunity to build immunity. I can personally vouch for 5 very healthy generations of farmers coming from this little poo infested, cow lucking, chicken cuddling DNA ;)
 
Another perspective on the hygiene and affection issues: I'm pretty sure my birds think I am a befuddled but affectionately tolerated flock member with a hygiene problem, because anytime I sit right outside the sand part of their run, they stop what they are doing and bustle over to give me a dust bath. If they see I am sitting near the edge of their sand area, they will immediately leave off foraging and start a very big dust bath, with sand flying everywhere, right at the edge of the run so that they can feel confident that I got some sand on me (which I usually do). So maybe from their perspective, we're the ones who need to be cleaned up and cared for!
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Just kidding -- I have no idea why they actually do this, but to me it feels like I am a flock member who missed the memo on staying tidy and needs a little help.

Which is to say that I don't have lap chickens either (mine are fine with being petted or picked up but don't exactly seek it out), but I think sometimes they develop other ways to show you that they have some kind of relationship with you.
 
I'm new to chickens this year. From the time I brought them outside they have not come anywhere near me (only two of the four had anything to do with me even in the brooder). They have just hit 21 weeks old, and the two who were more interested in me as chicks are now starting to lay. I immediately notice that they are more docile and likely to come a bit closer to me. I'm thinking the trend will continue.The other two have never wanted me touching them, so I doubt that will change, but it's nice to have a couple of them act like I'm not the worst thing around.
 
Hygiene is definitely important. Without it, epidemics and pandemics would be rampant, as they were in previous centuries. It is not for nothing that health care workers are teaching hygiene in Third World countries (with some success). Yet hygiene can be overdone. While it is probably a good idea to shield a newborn from germs as much as possible, it is certainly a bad idea to shield a toddler from every possible contact with germs. You said "our kids immunity is suffering from it". I am sure it is not all of our kids who are shielded so much from germs that the immune system can't be built properly. (I see it all around me that even basic hygiene is lacking.) There are also other factors that affect the building of the immune system. I am not an expert, but I assume that air pollution, unhealthy foods, and overeating also influence the immune system.

"More germs = more opportunity to build immunity" is too simple an equation. It is true that those who survive without hygiene have better immune systems, but I don't think you would want natural selection back, as this means that the not-so-strong offspring of yours would be dying at an early age. My great-grandmother gave birth to 13 children. Only 7 of them lived past age 5. Did all born babies of your 5 generations of farmers live? If yes, then your family has been darn lucky.

There is this old German saying: "Zu wenig und zu viel, das ist der Narren Spiel." ("Too little and too much, that is the game of the fools.")

What is too little and what is too much of hygiene will depend on the individual. If you come from a lineage with lots of natural selection (for instance, if some of your ancestors were native Americans), you'll probably get away with less hygiene. If, on the other hand, you come from a lineage of city folks who--luckily!--have had good medical care and little natural selection for generations, you better apply more hygiene to avoid getting sick. It also depends on what kind of germs are in your surroundings at a given time. While a strong immune system will handle many germs, there are certain pathogens (certain viruses, bacteria, and parasites) that are so virulent that even the best immune system is unable to cope with them. And how would you even know how good your immune system is? Even if you survived lack of hygiene as a child and young person, there are numerous factors that can have compromised your immune system over the years. Advanced age alone will do it. Of course, there are always some special individuals who will survive just about any onslaught of germs. My advice to you: Don't rely on being one of them.

I have been what you call "the runt of the litter" all my life (ever since all of our family came down with the flu while I was 1 year old and my flu developed into pneumonia--all without having chickens or any other animals). Nevertheless, I am not afraid of handling animals; I just apply a lot of hygiene. However, I avoid contact with humans (other than my husband) during the cold/flu-season (i.e., I don't go to events and don't go to stores). During times of flu/cold epidemics, not even my husband goes to stores. We, then, live off our food storage. It is the contact with contagious humans I am afraid of, not the contact with animals. The latter are much less dangerous for human health and safety.

Regarding chickens, I don't see any reason why one should be afraid of having these lovely animals for pets. Before I shied away from chickens, I would shy away from dogs (they can transmit fatal rabies and potentially fatal tapeworm), and I would, certainly, stay away from humans who can transmit every possible, ugly, and potentially fatal illness one can think of, and not only during the cold/flu season.
 
I bribed ours with hand-fed corncobs and (thoroughly [hot and cold] washed because of the pesticides) grapes. This did the trick. They love to come on my lap and shoulders but they still dislike being picked up.
 
So, @Alexandra33 and anyone else, would you say that (other than treats) you did anything with them when they were little that helped them be more tame and friendly once they got over the terrible teens? The reason I ask is that I just got 4 little girls who are around 5 weeks old. They're two Dark Cornish and two black ones which may be either Black Star or Australorp. The guy who sold them to me had both and wasn't sure which was which at this young age.

I still consider myself a newbie. I've had my little flock for about 5 years and now am down to one hen, and that's why I finally got some new girls. My original girls were around 16 weeks or so when I first got them, so I've never been through the chick stage. They were all BOs. They were reasonably friendly, some I could pick up, others I had to wait until evening when they were drowsy on their roost if I needed to do anything with them. None were ever cuddly or lap-sitters. I consider my girls to be pets. We hand-fed them treats, talked to them, etc, and they'd follow us around when they'd be out free-ranging. Sometimes they'd peck at our legs if they wanted something. I loved them all and was okay with their degree of friendliness but I've always been curious about the really cuddly friendly ones. I was wondering if I should be doing more with my little girls. I'm basically just hanging with them, giving them treats and all, letting them settle (I've only had them a few days now.) If I need to pick one up they all pretty well freak out and I hate to do that so I was just giving it time. Which sounds like what pretty much everyone is saying, but is there anything else? Is it nature or nurture? Anybody?
You know, @souriasia , I'm not sure if I did anything differently than anybody else, but here's my method for raising chicks. Not only did I spend a LOT of time handling and petting them, but I also placed one chick at a time in my lap for about 10 minutes each. Another favorite activity was to put them on the floor (we don't have carpet, so any poop was easily cleaned up) and let them run around, all the while acclimating them to our movements and sounds. They always would climb onto us of their own free will for attention at some point or another, so that way we just let them come when they felt like it. The nice thing is, even as adults most are used to being picked up, hugged, kissed, and talked to. But even with all of our socialization sessions when they were chicks, there are a couple who aren't afraid of us, but they happen to be naturally standoffish and would rather not participate in the affection that the others are receiving. That's the down side; you can't change a chicken's disposition, so if they're going to be aloof, they're going to be aloof no matter what you do. Your birds still have hope, because it sounds like they are experiencing what I call "The Flighty Phase." Every one of our 29 chickens has gone through it, but now that everybody is laying or close to it, they have become much more docile and even friendly again.
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-Alex
 
Lol @Tati I think you might have hit the nail on the head... I am 100% German ha-ha... Selective breeding?.. lol I'm totally joking around ;) ... I am the runt too, born too early.... The one out of 2 babies in 5 generations, plus aunts and uncles, that would have been lost... I survived Scarlet fever; my cousin Holly did not. Boy us Germans are tough to knock out :p
 

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