Chicken Phobias

[waterfowlrescue]

I have been very surprised at the number of people I have encountered recently who have phobias of chicken. We have a rooster here at the rescue and several of my volunteers will not touch him. They handle geese, swans, herons but no chickens! Just wondered how many of you have encountered people with an unusual fear of poultry?

 

[All about the EGG]

I aleays hear about the bird flu gag. Also, "chickens are filthy animals," only if you let them be!

 

[Colored Egg Farmer]

We had a 4-h member who was afraid of chickens. We finally broke it by taking one of my hurt chickens which had lost her eye to a raccoon and let him hold her. Of courese she loved to get held and the member now isn't afraid of chickens.

 

[scooter147]

Growing up we had a neighbor boy my age that was TERRIFIED of chickens. He would not go within 20 feet of the coop. Of course, we would get a chicken and chase him with it, you would have thought we were after him with chain saw or something. He would scream to high heavan and run like deer home.
When we played hide and seek it was always easy to hide from him, just step into the coop he wouldn't go near it.

 

[Wildsky]

One of my close friends won't go near anything with feathers!

 

[thechickenchick]

My 13 year old son is terrified of our chickens. He won't go in the coop or the run. He likes to throw food over the fence and watch them chase it. I brought my silkie baby in once and laid it on his chest while he was laying on the couch. I took a picture! The whole time he is muttering..Get her off, get her off! I do get tired of people saying how dirty chickens are. I even had someone ask me if I get sick alot now that I handle my chickens and their eggs all the time!

 

[waterfowlrescue]

I get a lot of people with geese phobias and I can generally justify that becuase I get nipped by geese pretty frequently. People always say dont you get bit alot handlign so many geese. I just say no becuase geese dont have teeth, lol. I do get pinched on occasion though. Little mallards seem to do the best pinch and twisting much better than geese. One day I had one get me square on the boob, that was some pain!

I just cant recall ever being attacked by a chicken so I find it bizarre so many people fear them. I guess its the pecking thing?

One day I had just left the raptor center where we had done exams and maintnence for the bald eagles. I picked up my cockatiel and stopped by a co-workers house to look at her budgie she just inherited from her mom who had passed.

When i showed up there was this big burly biker dude with tattoos and he sees me carrying my cockatiel peachy bird and says "oh crap now thats a big bird" and runs, literrally up the stairs and slams his bedroom door. My mouth just dropped open and i was thinking about the really big birds I had just handled and my little peachy just seemed so tiny and harmless. My daughter and I looked at each other and got a nice giggle.

The only reason i brought peachy with me is becuase the lady had small kids that didnt want to give up tweets and they agreed that they woudl allow her to go to a home where she would have a bird friend. So we took the parakeet home with us since the man was terrified of it and it obviously couldnt stay there. We still have Mr tweets but Peachy bird passed several years ago of bone cancer.

Tweety and Peachy never got along of course but the littl girl didnt know that. He does have a new parakeet friend now though.

 

[EllyMae]

Oh, how funny. Just yesterday I ran into an old friend and told her about my chickens and she just shook her head and said, "I am scared to death of chickens. I am always afraid they will fly up onto my head and flog me" Apparently she must have had some negative experience with chickens along the way, lol.