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

[CEO]

My least favorite thing is 100% illness and parasites. It can be so hard to diagnose and treat sometimes. Also if you have a job or are busy it can really be unpleasant.

 

[Artichoke Lover]

It’s a toss up between deaths in the flock and poop. I never had to do laundry so much before getting chickens. Especially when I was having to catch them to separate into different pens every morning. It’s about to be winter and that means that to run won’t dry out properly until about next May if last winter is anything to go by.

 

[BReeder!]

Health problems as well as deaths are the pits. Fortunately, I've not ran into much beyond bumble foot. We did have a few random deaths over the past few years, but mostly with younger birds, especially turkeys, and cause was unknown.

 

[Dabiys]

Poop and flies it brings. We clean coop daily and wash down the grass allot. But those darn flies in the summer months can be quite a pain

 

[Jeanw]

Poop and flies it brings. We clean coop daily and wash down the grass allot. But those darn flies in the summer months can be quite a pain

Hi, the “Rescue” reusable fly traps work pretty good Amazon has them but be warned the bait smells like death lol. Put it away from where you might want to hang out.

 

[birdlady11]

It's the flower-bed-magnet! No matter how many acres they have to free range on they head straight for the flower beds and tear them up like a demolition team. Or they head to the yard and scratch in the grass until it looks like a rototiller has been through. If I had the ability to speak just one time to animals it would be to tell my girls, "I'll let you free range every day all day if you'd just stay out of the flower beds and stop tearing up the lawn!"

 

[morsekathan]

I voted "nothing, I love every thing", but actually I don't like broody hens! I feel bad that I can't fulfill their desire to be mothers, and I am annoyed that they hog the "good nest" box, every single time and every one of them. So, I am changing my vote to "dealing with broody hens"!

 

[Padfoot22]

Death of a bird is the worst! My least favorite is finding an chicken with an illness and can’t get them treatment in time before they die. Or I think they are doing better and I’ve saved them from illness only to find them dead in the coop in the morning. Or even worse, a predator gets to one and they are so injured you have to put them down.

 

[Fluffybuttmom]

My least favorite part, is hand raising a chick, to have an owl or coyote take it. My favorite rooster Roo-Roo was gone one morning. I was crushed. We tracked it from the tree to the pastures, where we saw the feathers and the paw print of the coyote. Roo Roo fought hard tho. Miss him. Its terrible.

 

[preciouspanda]

Rooster attacks ,then getting sick and than losing them