We raised "Olive" from a day old chick, and I have to say- we were sold from the start. As a wee chick, Olive was picked on some, even though she was the biggest of the bunch, but she grew out of that, and learned to hold her head up high when the bully chick came around. Pretty soon, she started putting herself between the bully (whom we now know was a "he") and his new target.
When the chicks were all a little older, we started trying to get our dog (who has never been around chickens) acclimated to each other. Well, it wasn't long before Olive was riding around on Lucy's back- Lucy will still run out to the coop and put her nose to the wire, waiting- Olive will run up and do the same. It's really cute! (I should note here that we the work we did with Lucy was over the course of weeks and months, and because she is at least part "bird dog", we will never leave her unattended with the gals. But I am very proud of Lucy, and she is very good with them- attended.)
Olive is super aware of what is going on over her head, and will alert the other chickens when something flies by. She is the first to come running when I call "chick-chick" for breakfast, and still purrs instantly when I pick her up. What's more, when our friends kids come over, Olive hops right up, and will happily sit in laps for hours, just humming and cooing away. If there was ever a thing as a perfect chicken, I think we got her.
In short, I don't think we were quite prepared for how smitten we would be with Olive, but I can tell you that we will definitely be getting more EE chicks in the future. Now, I know that every hen is different, and there will always be those rare birds that are just special, and it doesn't seem to matter which breed they are when that's the case. But for us, it was Olive Gorgeous McLadyBeard who stole our hearts.