Reviews by CalBickieMomma

The neighbors behind us raise American Game chickens, so I've been around them my entire life. As a child, my sister and I had two hens and they were great mothers and good pets. We also were given a rooster who was a nice bird - not aggressive towards us at all and his feathers were so gorgeous. Many of our chickens descended from these hens and rooster (mixed breeds).

As an adult, I rescued a chick from a stray cat and nursed him back to health. He had a large swelling on his side (probably from the cat), that eventually went down. He turned out to be the only rooster who would attack me, even when I held him. Perhaps he was just too comfortable with me or he just had a streak of aggression in his genes. As a baby, he would perch on my shoulder and was sweet.

I currently have one game hen (rescued from my dogs) and she's in with my bantam rooster. She is comfortable with me, but not nearly as friendly as the laying chicks I raised this summer (probably because I didn't raise her from a chick).

My sister and I had two Easter Eggers (we called them Araucanas because the feed store probably sold them as such) when we were kids and both hens were great pets (one was buff orange, the other brown with gold neck feathers). We let our chickens free range then and my EE hatched out a batch of chicks once or twice. I recall one time when a large hawk landed on a fence post to check them out. We heard a ruckus and came running outside to find the hen jumping up at the hawk to scare it away. The babies were nowhere to be found, but after the hawk left momma chicken called them out from the shrubs where she'd told them to hide. She'd also allow us to hold them and play with them without a fuss. Great mother hen.

Now I have two Easter Eggers who are about 3 months old. One is gold and brown and she will let me hold her but prefers to just hang out around me or sit on my shoulder. The other one is mostly white with some rusty-dusted feathers and smoky gray neck feathers (really neat color) and she will come up to me and ''whine'' until I pick her up and give her snuggles. So very different personalities, but both very tame and comfortable with me.

The only reason I state the roosters are aggressive is because we adopted one from some friends of ours and he was always terrorizing us as kids, and the other was a street chicken on my block who terrorized the neighbors (but I was older at the time and simply picked him up to show him I wasn't afraid of him. After that, he was reluctant to attack me). Things might have turned out differently if I had been the one to raise either of the boys from eggs (most of the roosters I've raised since eggs or day-old have turned out great).

I love RIRs! When my family first moved into my childhood home over thirty years ago, it came with a flock of chickens, mostly RIRs, including a roo by the name of Arthur (my mom still talks about what a great rooster he was). When I got laying chickens again about six years ago, I got some RIRs and purposely ordered a roo (one of the hens ended up being a roo, so I had two). They both ended up being sweet roosters (even though I’ve heard they can be aggressive). I have a couple of young hens right now (10 weeks old) in my mixed flock and they are both very friendly and love attention and cuddling (and as young chicks they were the most inquisitive).