people with house chickens

[Ponyfeather]

Hope everyone is having a good holiday last night my three went from sleeping in the brooder to in the rabbit house. We have a visually impaired chicken the one we almost lost to chill. She is doing great the other two hens takecare of her.

 

[Sylvester017]

Hope everyone is having a good holiday last night my three went from sleeping in the brooder to in the rabbit house. We have a visually impaired chicken the one we almost lost to chill. She is doing great the other two hens takecare of her.

How do the other 2 hens take care of your visually impaired chicken - is she bad in one eye or both eyes? It's hard to imagine brutal chickens being kind or taking care of each other. Dogs and cats, often. But chickens are kinda peckish toward injured birds.

 

[pdx2phx]

Quote:
We have a bantam pen with one completely blind hen, and two more hens that have some very limited sight. We've got my sweet older Serama roo and a couple of other gentle bantam hens in there with them. When they were all introduced the gentle hens made 'mama hen' clucking noises at the food and water that the bind/blind-ish hens used to find the food. It was the sweetest thing. They don't do it any more (probably because they don't 'need' to ?), and it only lasted a day or so. Wish I had made a recording.

I do know if these blind girls were outside in our larger run they'd get beat up on....but they're safe and seem pretty happy with their gentle buddies.

 

[Sylvester017]

We have a bantam pen with one completely blind hen, and two more hens that have some very limited sight. We've got my sweet older Serama roo and a couple of other gentle bantam hens in there with them. When they were all introduced the gentle hens made 'mama hen' clucking noises at the food and water that the bind/blind-ish hens used to find the food. It was the sweetest thing. They don't do it any more (probably because they don't 'need' to ?), and it only lasted a day or so. Wish I had made a recording.

I do know if these blind girls were outside in our larger run they'd get beat up on....but they're safe and seem pretty happy with their gentle buddies.

Bantams do seem to be somewhat kinder than LF.

 

[foxandthehen]

So excited! My little roo will finally cuddle up and sleep with me!

 

[kissofcrimson]

I'm so glad to have found this post. Right now I have 16 chickens living in the house in quarantine. They're seperated out into 6 tubs, with 6 adults and 10 chicks. Several people I know are like "how do you keep chickens in your house?" and I'm just like "you don't keep chickens in your house?" lol They don't run around because we have 8 indoor cats and 2 dogs, but we take every one of them out for handling each day. Eventually they are put in larger tubs as they age until we can take them outside.

 

[Skink]

Has anyone else noticed that Mypetchicken.com removed all mention of house chickens from their diaper listings? For years and years they recommended them for pet chickens "you wouldn't dream of putting outdoors" or however it went, that was the gist, and for some reason that has been removed. Nothing else was changed, as far as I can tell. In the end it doesn't matter what they think, keeping a chicken indoors is not cruel provided it is done properly (just like keeping literally any other pet) but it strikes me as strange that they would want to specifically redact any visibly pro-house chicken stance! Especially considering so many of their hard goods are expensive specialty items that one would think we'd be more likely to buy.. I wonder what led them to this decision.

 

[Sylvester017]

Has anyone else noticed that Mypetchicken.com removed all mention of house chickens from their diaper listings? For years and years they recommended them for pet chickens "you wouldn't dream of putting outdoors" or however it went, that was the gist, and for some reason that has been removed. Nothing else was changed, as far as I can tell. In the end it doesn't matter what they think, keeping a chicken indoors is not cruel provided it is done properly (just like keeping literally any other pet) but it strikes me as strange that they would want to specifically redact any visibly pro-house chicken stance! Especially considering so many of their hard goods are expensive specialty items that one would think we'd be more likely to buy.. I wonder what led them to this decision.

That is curious. I'm thinking maybe it's not a cruelty issue regarding having a pet chicken but maybe because keeping a permanent house chicken in diapers 24/7 is not healthy for the vent area of a chicken? I know when we had a Silkie indoors for almost 3 months with a diaper her vent area got sparse with feathers -- even though we changed the diaper twice a day and washed and blow-dryed her tush every night and left the diaper off overnight to let the vent area "breathe" overnight. If I go by that experience it might be considered unhealthy to the bird to be in a diaper constantly. Who knows? Just guessing. Maybe someone complained to MPC? I don't keep any permanent house chickens but if I get one that has to stay indoors for medication, injury, or illness, I might use a diaper. But lately I've just been fencing off the rug area in the dinette nook and let the chicken stay on the easy-clean ceramic tile floor in the kitchen. We keep after the poops with cleaner and it's less stress on a sick bird not to hassle with a diaper a couple times a day. Some medications can cause disruption to normal poops and can get really messy, watery, runny, uncomfortable for the chicken in a diaper. I would think it's up to owners to use their own good judgments for when to use or not use house diapers.

 

[Reinsaway]

I use a rabbit water bottle, an Radagast took to it instantly

It's WAY easier to fill and no more cruddy water!

I keep trying to find better ways to make a hanger, they are so hard to put in some places!!  My silkies are almost getting too tall to use the one I have in their cage, I guess when they are it will be time to graduate to the rubbermaid tub!!  I really like your set up in the rubbermaid jug, I assume it won't freeze in the winter, and in the summer I could totally see a chicken "lemonade" party with some iced down electrolytes lol!

 

[Skink]

That is curious. I'm thinking maybe it's not a cruelty issue regarding having a pet chicken but maybe because keeping a permanent house chicken in diapers 24/7 is not healthy for the vent area of a chicken? I know when we had a Silkie indoors for almost 3 months with a diaper her vent area got sparse with feathers -- even though we changed the diaper twice a day and washed and blow-dryed her tush every night and left the diaper off overnight to let the vent area "breathe" overnight. If I go by that experience it might be considered unhealthy to the bird to be in a diaper constantly. Who knows? Just guessing. Maybe someone complained to MPC? I don't keep any permanent house chickens but if I get one that has to stay indoors for medication, injury, or illness, I might use a diaper. But lately I've just been fencing off the rug area in the dinette nook and let the chicken stay on the easy-clean ceramic tile floor in the kitchen. We keep after the poops with cleaner and it's less stress on a sick bird not to hassle with a diaper a couple times a day. Some medications can cause disruption to normal poops and can get really messy, watery, runny, uncomfortable for the chicken in a diaper. I would think it's up to owners to use their own good judgments for when to use or not use house diapers.

That is odd! But I do not disbelieve it. I've got 3 house chickens who wear their diapers the majority of the time. I change diapers every 2 to 4 hours depending on what my day is looking like, they get a gentle baby wiping at night and put to bed without diapers on most of the time. Sometimes they sleep overnight in their diaper, like when I am ill and fall asleep before they're ready to go to bed. I've yet to have any trouble with it in a little over 2 years, including with our silkie (who turns a year old in a few days, yay!) I've found trimming to be necessary on my cochin's bum to prevent sticking. The other two are easy enough to keep clean with no trimming. I do give them baths when it seems necessary, which is not often because, well.. they're chickens! Given some time diaper free to preen, they take care of most little mess themselves. Most baths involve my large fowl cochin because she did something silly and got her foot feathers all disgusting rather than anything to do with bums. Every bird is different, though. Some may have more sensitive skin than others I'm sure. Most people also do not have the benefit of being at home to basically babysit their birds 24/7 like I do and because a house chicken is not for everyone some people might imagine they are not for anyone.

That said, I have used the original diaper model MPC sold and I did not like it at all. It was uncomfortable for my bird and was over all not a fun time, and did not contain the mess as well. The pocket also flattened too easily, allowing her vent to get messy faster + easier.. so maybe there would be welfare concerns with that diaper model, specifically. I am keen on trying all the other available commercial diapers to put together a big review sometime. One thing I know for sure is that one'll be getting 0 stars. It was frustrating and nearly turned me away from diapers entirely, I could see it tainting people's opinions if they had experiences like mine.

There are welfare concerns with chickens being kept indoors, namely enrichment, the need for natural sunlight (or a proper artificial equivalent,) and just how much damage one little bird can do when you turn your back for a second. All of these can be addressed with proper husbandry, which is different from and arguably harder than caring for outdoor chickens, but not even close to bad or impossible.. just takes a dedicated and informed owner. These points are generally not brought up by anti-house chicken types, though. I've had people who keep parrots yell at me for having the audacity to love my birds indoors. Parrot people! Who keep undomesticated, harder to entertain, fully flight gifted birds that need endlessly more complicated diets, toys and commitment in cages! Can you believe it lmao. Not that I'm against people keeping parrots, because again they thrive with proper husbandry in the right household, but it feels like someone keeping a tiger in their living room yelling at me for having a house cat.

whoops sorry I got way off track and ranted a little there.