Do you consider your Chickens Pets or Livestock

[MarkJr]

Very friendly livestock.

I’ll sell/eat/trade any and all except my broody hen. Find a young broody and she will be exempt also...... unless I happen to get lucky and get two young broodies, then may the best one win.

 

[aart]

Do they need to have a profitable return?

No, that would be crazy.
I do expect the sale of eggs to cover feed costs, and annually they have.
Some years are more productive than others.
Overhead, housing builds, and equipment costs are the hobby part of my chickeneering.

I hatch replacement layers every year and slaughter cockerels and older hens to get winter numbers down where they work best.
Not to say there haven't been a few I am more enamored of than others, and some have been sold as pets rather than grace my table.

 

[K0k0shka]

Some of them are pets, others are livestock, but we treat them all as pets until their time comes.

 

[HappyClucker7]

All of mine are pets.

 

[Folly's place]

Both!
There needs to be that third category up there, it's not one or the other for many of us here.
Legally the chickens are livestock, and that's fine, and includes how they may travel across state and especially national borders, and their use for eggs and meat.
That doesn't mean that they can't be pets too!
Mary

 

[CSolis]

Mine are all pets with benefits.

ditto!

 

[chrissynemetz]

Both. Although some become more like pets than livestock.

 

[Thechicksdigme]

Ours are pets

 

[WallyBirdie]

Pets.
I don't eat poultry or eggs. Eggs are collected and given to locals who want them.


It's not livestock if it can enjoy newspaper comics!

 

[Double Yolked]

I can't 100% call them one or the other. You needed a "both" category to be honest in an answer. They are livestock, that I've made pets of. I don't raise them for cash profit but instead for food. I have some severe food preservative allergies and many foods bought in the store can put me in the ER, while raising it myself is fine. That said, I treat them more as pets than standard livestock since I don't raise them for meat but only for eggs and can afford to get more attached to them. I think I'd hate to have to raise broilers for meat. It would hurt having to butcher them regularly. I have butchered egg eating hens and a few nasty roosters but mostly my hens live to a ripe old age and are well repaid for the eggs they give me.