Official BYC Poll: What Is Your Least Favorite Thing About Keeping Chickens?

[BYC Project Manager]

Keeping chickens as pets can be a rewarding experience, plus it ensures a regular supply of fresh eggs, keep pests under control and fertilize the garden. However, raising chickens also requires some effort from yourself. So we would like to find out: What is your least favorite thing about keeping chickens?

Place your vote above, and please elaborate in a reply below if you chose "Other".

Further Reading:

• How To Raise Chickens
• Common Mistakes Poultry Keepers Make (And How to Fix Them)
• Chicken FAQs - The Frequently Asked Questions Of Raising Chickens

(Check out more exciting Official BYC Polls HERE!)

 

[topochico225]

The feeling of picking up a really cute chick and letting them perch on your hand, only to discover their feet are covered in a lovely fresh cecal poop.

 

[Tclloyd0812]

Although cleaning up poo and coops isn't the funniest thing, my LEAST favorite thing about keeping chickens is having a limit on how many I can keep!

It's not that I can't keep more on our 15 acres, it's just that I know I'll have to add more coops and having more than 100-120 chickens seems overwhelming... it's so hard not to keep chicks or introduce new breeds! Lol

 

[Chookchicken]

Death, that is my least favourite part of keeping chickens. Even if you didn’t have an attachment to the chicken you lost it’s just heartbreaking listening to your others chickens cry out for them. It’s even worse when one of your mother hens loses her child and then they sit around crying for them.

 

[MTKitty]

The poop. All the poop! In the bedding, in the chicken yard, on the bottom of my shoes getting tracked into house yard.

Poop is the pits.

 

[Silkie Princess]

Dealing with unnecessry deaths, illnesses, lice and mice Predator attacks too

 

[DobieLover]

Hands down: death of the birds. I feel too strongly and get attached to the birds the more I interact with them in a one on one basis. That is usually when they have some issue that requires extra attention.
When I decided to get chickens I had this crazy notion that we'd harvest the hens when they were in their second or third year and replace them with new pullets. Yeah, right. My older girls are my favorites! I'm most attached to them.
As for the poop, I'm a weirdo. I love cleaning the boards every morning and composting the load. My veggie garden is absolutely amazing!

 

[kerbotx]

Dealing with extra roosters - it's so exciting when a hen goes broody, and all those adorable babies hatch out, then eventually, realizing the 30-50% rooster rate...

 

[3KillerBs]

Cleaning up poop.

Which is why I used deep bedding and deep litter in order to minimize how often I have to deal with it.

 

[Nashv755]

The poop minefield at the front door, walkway along with the grass and dirt they kick up on it lol 100 birds and they want to hang out around the porch all day.