Aww. My Ameracuana, Macao (don't ask, husband named her, no clue) is adorable but so skiddish even though she's been handled and spoiled just like the rest of our chickens and guineas all of whom are super tame. Wanted to ask, is this common? She is sweet once you catch Her but acts like you're trying to kill her if you try to pick her up. She's not the brightest either but it's cute.this pic is a month old she's over 3 mos now and is becoming quite the hen. She's so soft.
Ameraucanas seem to mature more slowly than many other layer breeds. My friend and I have had Ameraucanas and EEs and we were always comparing notes and our birds were from different breeders. We always shared how spooky kooky jittery but sweet these birds were. I did some research and found on OurFlyBabies.com a writeup about their Blue Wheaten Ameraucanas. They said the breed was very nurturing and they always had a flock of them because they would take in orphaned chicks or injured birds without picking on them. It was that writeup and my friend's input about her birds that encouraged me to get a B/W Ameraucana and everything the website said about B/W Ams is true with our girl.
She was indoors during quarantine and she let us pet and hold her and she would talk to us if we carried on conversations with her. She would coo if we held her. No chicken likes human touch but she was not that difficult to reach down and pick up in spite of her jumpy tendencies. When she was introduced to the outdoor flock she was a lot less people friendly until she saw that the only way to get treats was to join the other chickens to get hand-fed treats. She's 2 y/o now and is the most wary of my hens. She is forever watching and guarding and chases the stray cats out of the yard and has taught the Silkies to join her too in scaring the felines. She's 2x bigger than the Silkies but let's them chest-bump her without retaliating. She is so wonderfully tolerant of the bantams when my other breeds were downright mean to them (the bullies were re-homed). We kept our Amer with the Silkies because of her incredible kindness to flockmates.
The alertness of the Amer will always be there and we call our girl the guardian sentinel of our flock - the others will sleep through noise but she will leave her roost to check out nighttime noises. I love this breed because of its tendency to avoid conflict and sometimes injure themselves to get out of harm's way. My friend's roo broke his neck when all he had to do was back out but they are so jumpy and get panicky that they often get injuries getting wings or legs or heads stuck because they got spooked - but after all that I can't think of a sweeter-natured breed that usually doesn't get involved in flock politics because of their non-combative nature. I've only had hens but our friend had 3 cockerels and they were all non-combative boys.
