We're still pretty new to this but we've had 3 "batches" of chicks thus far. I still haven't figured out exactly what's optimal for them. It seemed like for a lot of the chicks the more I tried to handle them the more they disliked being handled . . no matter how gentle I was. It seems like some are just genetically a bit calmer than others. Our first set had a natural lap chicken. She'd jump up to see us and accept being petted, follow us around the yard etc. She was a black sex link and was killed by the neighbor's dog.
Thinking other black sex links might be the same we bought two more, and one of them jumped on our hands but never really liked being petted or preferred us to her flock. The second one always freaked out when we picked her up no matter how much time we spent calming her down it seemed. Once we put them out in the coop they really started to avoid us and dislike being picked up, except when cold or scared. The one survivor from our first batch, a black Australorp always freaked out when she was picked up, seemingly no matter what we did, but suddenly when she feathered out, she turned into a lap chicken. She won't come to you necessarily but won't freak out if picked up and will happily go to sleep on your arm or in your lap if you're stroking her gently. The fourth of our group that's in the coop is the barred rock that has been friendly, or at least accepting of human contact since day one (and we got her at a few days old). She will still allow for pettings and picking up but doesn't like to be separated from her flock for long.
We've had a total of three silver laced wyandottes but none of them have been friendly at all.
Now we have a group of 5 EE chicks, which we got at about a week old and we've had for about a week. It seems like two, perhaps three of them are relatively friendly, one makes a nice "wrist warmer" and will go to sleep on my wrist or arm for quite a while, the other two are a little more iffy but will not totally freak out when picked up.
I've been giving these lots of treats, turkey cold cuts and recently freeze dried meal worms (oddly our larger chickens are clueless about these). It took some doing to get them on meal worms (had to break them up into pieces and feed the pieces) but now they seem to be the chicks favorite. I've been trying to just touch them a bit so that they don't always see my hand as "that thing that picks me up" or the thing that gives them food. I'm still really not sure how to properly socialize them as picking them up more seems to make them fear me more.
