tinysaurus-rex:

cockatrice:

tinysaurus-rex:

Both sexes:
• snuggle and cuddle a bunch!
• are very devoted to their flock mates
• highly trainable
• will smell bad if they’re not on a good diet, but will smell amazing if they are on a quality diet, like spices and powder
• can wear a diaper
• beg for food
• have soft feet and beautiful feathers
• amazing eyes
• will love you
• will try to protect you

Hens:
• like to talk, some more than others, the classic “booock boooooooock bock bock bock” and lots of noise after they lay an egg
• might go broody depending on the breed, they can become TOTAL grumps
• may become roosters if they’re old or have a damaged ovary (which means crowing, big comb and wattles, long tail, the whole deal)
• can be spayed and basically become the latter
• Eggs which grant the following:
– yummy food that’s healthy for both you and your hen! Cook up a nice meal that you can both enjoy after her hard work
– a need for lots of calcium in the form of layers mash, oyster shells, crushed egg shells, or vitamins
– a need for at least 4 hours of sunshine each day to process the calcium, vitamin D3 supplements, or artificial sunshine via an avian lightbulb
– health issues related to egg production such as egg binding, egg yolk peritonitis
– life span could be cut short because the more eggs a hen lays the harder it is on her body, if you want a long lived, healthy pet get a breed with minimal production

Roosters:
• crowing!! Crowing can be stopped with a no-crow collar (don’t worry, it’s humane, they can still talk it just softens the noise) every rooster has a unique crow
• make little baby noises even though they’re Big™ and Bad™
• terrible teenager weeks in which they wanna fight and fuck everything, depending on the breed it lasts a few weeks…none of my boys are bad with me
• once adults won’t want to attack you as long as you teach them right
• enjoy and benefit from sunlight but don’t need it as much as hens
• they wanna dance for you! Some people say it’s bad but they’re just trying to show you how awesome they are
• if you give a treat to them they’ll try to give it back to you
• if they find something they like lying around like a shoe or any random object that catches their eye they want to share it with you
• even mature boys might wanna bang your shoes, it’s instinct okay? Like pigeons, we’ve bred them to breed a lot
• can be neutered and basically become big lazy boys who will act like hens

All in all chickens:
• are amazing house pets
• deserve love
• feather puppies
• an actual dinosaur that you can hug today

I AM HERE FOR THESE KIND OF QUESTIONS YO please feel free to message me if you want any help!!

First off, nothing on earth stops chickens from smelling bad. You can at best reduce the smell by feeding very high quality fermented feed by a bit. Any powder or spice claiming to do such is snake oil. No matter what you are going to have to deal with cecal poops! Cecal poops are cooked long game in the ceca. There’s no stopping that. Along with fermenting the feed, feeds without corn (and pref. also without soy but that is usually hard for folks to find locally) are going to produce a lot less sugary waste than feeds with corn.

Also, no, a rooster can’t be neutered. That surgery is very invasive, anesthesia is always a big risk for birds, poultry are under unique laws regarding medication that can make recovery a concern, and in the end might have no effect on your rooster’s personality at all. If you can’t handle a rooster at full throttle roo behavior then a roo is def. not the choice for you… the same goes for spaying. I have had to face the decision of spaying a hen before and the way we eventually chose to go was hormone implants, which is not only illegal to use in poultry (my vet literally broke the law to help me save my chicken) but was very expensive and didn’t work for an entire 6 months. Hens can never be fully spayed because of how vascular the ovaries are.. it is easy in mammals but in birds you are risking their lives, so it should only ever be performed as a last ditch resort, no other option procedure to save the hen’s life, because she’s as likely to die on the table as not.

but that said, speaking as someone who has a ton of experience with both sexes living in my home:

 ROOSTERS ALL THE WAY!

I fucking love roosters so much, and while there are days I wish they didn’t go around hollerin their fool heads off because I have a headache they are so much less stress than hens in the health department. Hens are SO PRONE to reproductive disorders and as mentioned there is very little to be done for it.. and in general they’re not as clownish as roosters. I adore my hens, my first and oldest house chicken is a hen, but if I could have nothing but roosters and not have to worry about fights breaking out I honestly would.

Pros over hens you don’t have listed:

• Roosters seem to know what restraint is. Hens conveniently forget that concept when there’s something they want, or you might end up with a demanding diva.
• Daintier eaters. They still do it, but then don’t scoop nearly as much feed out and around as hens do, I guess since they’re taking the time to watch out for extra tasty scraps. Not to say they don’t make a mess though.
• House hens will re-arrange your home looking for the perfect place to lay today’s egg, only to lay it in the exact same spot she always has. Also idk if you’re the type to stress when you see an animal stressing but you’d think her world is ending bc she can’t decide which corner of the couch seems better and my heart rate is spiking just thinking about it oh my god
• Their vocal range is a lot larger than a hen’s beyond just crowing.

  Both sexes sing the egg song. Hens like to croon and might borble but you can kind of have a conversation with a rooster! They are very responsive. They even have a tiny dinosaur roar! My outdoor roos use that as a way to warn the hens of something scary catching their attention, but my indoor rooster uses it as a way of expressing his displeasure. Nothing beats having a little dinosaur march up to you, look you dead in the eye, and say “RAAAEEERRRRR.” because he thinks your music taste is shit.

• NO BROODY POOPS. Those demon shits will stink up your entire house for a half hour at LEAST no matter where in the house you are, how many doors you have between yourself and them, or how many windows you throw open.
• Everyone wants hens. It is easy to find them a loving home, all because they don’t crow and pour their well-being in to making something we want to eat for only a few years of what could be a long life. No one wants poor roosters. There are far more roosters than there are homes because even with people like me out there who would adopt every roo forever, we can only have so many. You’ve done that animal a huge service taking them in to your home.
• To that end it would be very easy to find a rooster. Raising a chicken from a chick, especially if you only have one, is intensive work. There is also no guarantee on the personality of that chicken. If you can get a sweet boy who is fully grown you can be relatively sure he’ll stay sweet; if he’s 2yrs or older he is very unlikely to ever change. Agreed, they do go through a punkass teenager stage, but with patience and basic respect they come out the other side placid and gentle.

Looking over some of the other stuff here.. dancing can be bad! Mostly it isn’t. It is highly contextual. If a rooster bumrushes you and starts circling your feet in a dance, then goes to pecking/scratching while keeping his side to you.. he’s trying to assert himself and bait you in to a fight. All you have to do is not take the bait. Dancing is showing off how healthy and full of vigor he is, to impress you as a mate, scare you as a rival, or drive home that he’s in good shape to be an excellent protector and provider to the others in the flock. If he’s annoyed, it is meant as a FUCK YOU FIGHT ME (and is honestly a bit like a petulant child throwing a fit in some cases) but he can also do it when he’s feeling particularly peppy, excited, randy, or even embarrassed/insecure and wanting to shore up his self-image a bit.

Honestly a lot of chicken language is like that. It is nuanced, you have to take in the entire scene to know what they’re saying, just like sometimes you need the whole sentence to know which way someone is using an english word. House chickens are surprisingly adept at using this language in ways outdoor chickens do not, at least in my anecdotal experience, likely because they are provided with such novel situations to use it in!

Also yeah. They will bang the fuck out of a blanket or slipper or t-shirt. Anything soft. Luckily I’ve not found any related mess. My house rooster turns 3 in Oct. and he recently stopped masturbating on everything comfy he could get his cloaca on. He’s a family man now I guess! He is bonded to a single hen (which some roosters, usually of particular breeds, will do!) and they’re raising an adopted baby together (he never breeds with her.. doesn’t seem to know how to fuck something that isn’t a slipper, whoops #singletonchickproblems, but he plays Broody Rooster to every baby he has ever seen so.)

Also for the no crow collars! I have used crow collars on… hoooo. A LOT of roosters. Anyone I have outdoors who starts crowing and is big enough (more on that soon) gets one since I’m in a residential neighborhood. Some stuff worth knowing:

• The bigger the rooster, the better it will work. Larger bantams are difficult to collar and do better with straight velcro vs. the expensive soft ones like you can buy on mypetchicken. Smaller bantams are nearly impossible. Fastening it tight enough for it to have effect on their necks basically can’t be done w/o causing them discomfort or risking harm. I don’t collar my serama, for ex. If you don’t want a LF roo, consider keeping the smallest of small and foregoing a collar. Tiny uncollared roos sound like squeaktoys even beside collared bigguns!
• Crow collars have a 24/7 purpose but aren’t good for 24/7 wear. They aren’t set it and forget it, especially if the bird is still growing. There will be feather wear and even ingrown feathers! I currently only have a naked neck collared so that isn’t much of an issue, but it also lets me see that food has impeded travel to the crop even when lightly wrapped. You HAVE to feed crumble to a chicken with a collar. Pellets take a lot longer to pass and can create a true blockage. You also have to be careful of the treats you give. Soft fruits are great, but anything slightly stiff and swallowed whole can cause issue, as can sticky treats like warm porridge. Let your boy have time without it on. Wearing a collar is better than being cooked up and eaten, and with proper upkeep it isn’t cruel, but it is an additional thing to deal with and invites potential for problems uncollared roos don’t have.

• On this same page ask yourself if crowing is really make or break in your home. If you can let him go without a collar I would let him. White noise can block their crow out if you’re worried about being woken up when he starts screaming at 4am.
• And finally, if you absolutely need a collar, consider getting a naked neck. They are going to be the most comfortable wearing a collar and you can monitor them the easiest since you can see the tube from the mouth to the crop at a glance. People also seem to think they’re ugly too, so roos have even more trouble finding a home than a fully feathered roo would 😦 poor buddies.

YIKES sorry this is so verbose chickens are My Thing and house chickens are Especially My Thing so apologies for the infodump LMAO. Anyway! I’ve stumbled over every problem with house chickens you can imagine and then-some so I’m always happy to share, there’s not a lot of practical information on the net, just a lot of optimistic stuff. So I’m happy to share if there’s anything you want to know!

Thanks for these additions! Roosters are definitely my favorite to keep inside, I always take my big man Wonton in for some cuddles on the couch or to share lunch with.

Check out show girls for another breed that can wear a collar all the time, obviously they can be roosters despite their name!! They’re silkies with a naked neck.

I still gotta disagree with scent though, I love burying my face into their floof because they smell nice, obviously not the caeca poop but the birds themselves are wonderful. I’ve had my boys inside all day before and they only pooped MAYBE ten times :b