Our Delawares don't run screaming when you enter the coop, which is nice. You pretty much have to watch your feet because they are curious. And if you leave the coop door open, you're likely to have a parade following you around more than a Great Escape. I have a few Delawares that like to be spoon fed (from the last hatches, so they had to compete for food as babies and quickly figured out to come eat near the humans).
But my Delawares don't much enjoy being handled. They get used to it if you persist, but I don't over-handle my birds so have never tried to turn one into a lap animal. Sometimes they scream when we pick them up.
There is one of the two older hens who is mellow enough with humans, and not overly noisy or "flighty," but she is a bit of a bully. She acts like nobody else can use the nesting boxes or the roosts. PapaDel is more of a team player.
These are large-ish birds that don't seem to want to waste their energy being mean or acting crazy. They aren't the speediest chickens, and are not able to fly as well as our hatchery birds do. They seem to think they can fly, but it's comical. They do play, and chase things around, but it is all rather slow and mellow.
We've had 16 cockerels living in a colony together for a long time now, and they do a lot of staring each other down with heads lowered and hackles raised, but not a lot of fighting. This is fantastic ... it means we were able to grow them out for a nice long time so we could make more informed breeding choices.
