Exotic chickens as pets?

[StellaBlue]

Does anyone (or has anyone) kept exotic chickens as pets, indoors or out?

We have some number of chickens in a backyard flock for egg production. We have mostly buff Orps - big birds that are prolific layers of rich brown eggs. Growing up I was surrounded by production reds and white leghorns. The reds and leghorns always struck me like fast -moving plants - NOT very bright, personable, or friendly, nothing I would consider as pet potential

None of these things prepared me for the charm and personality of some individual chicks and adult birds we have raised. My favorites for pet potential: Japanese Phoenix, Polish Crested. and dark Brahma bantams. These birds have all shown themselves to be sweet and cuddly, and quite intelligent as poultry go.

Others that were incredibly cute - and that I WANTED to cuddle, turned out mean as sin. Silkies are adorable, and would kill youin your sleep if they could figure out how to pick your locks. (They are good sitters, though, and worth keeping around to hatch other birds' eggs.) My partridge bantam rooster, a cocky little man named eightball, was one of the most gorgeous birds you could ever imagine - and would land on my shins with spurs flashing the intant I stepped into the back yard.

The Phoenix are interesting - they are the old Japanese breed that you see in the pictures with the huge long tail. They were bred to be garden pets, and to sit on a perch to show off the beautiful tail. I had a lovely hen for many years, named Rose. She would hop onto my arm as soon as she saw me, and would solicit petting and cuddling as nicely as any cockatoo - minus the screams and the chewed woodwork. She would permit me to put her on her back like a baby and rub under her wings.

The Crested Polish chickens are another old breed; you can see them in paintings by the Dutch masters. The are comical in appearance, with huge puffy head feathers that look like they are wearing big feather hats. They, too, can be raised up tame, friendly, and cuddly.

I can't comment really on the Brahma bantams as a breed, since I had just one rooster I got in a lot of misc. feather footed chicks. He was an absolute riot, and incredibly friendly.

I have come to consider chickens as vastly underappreciated pet birds. How can anyone deny the appeal of an easy-care, undemanding, cuddly, friendly bird who will also give you breakfast?

This year as well as adding two or three birds to our laying flock (which we do annually to manage attrition from the occasional cat or possum attack), we plan to build segregated runs and yards to breed Crested Polish and Japanese Phoenix. I'm excited that we will have these birds again, and that we will hopefully be get more. Chickens are blessedly easy to breed, even the fancy ones, and I'm really looking forward to building nice flocks of these cuties.

http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/C...RKPhoenix.html


http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/C...lishBanty.html

[Dustin]

How many do you have total?
I do not have exotic chickens! BUT i do run a farm of layers. We have 130,000 Bovens at the moment!

[StellaBlue]

Originally Posted by Dustin

How many do you have total?
I do not have exotic chickens! BUT i do run a farm of layers. We have 130,000 Bovens at the moment!

OMG, Dustin, that is a LOT of chickens! What a feed bill you must have! I am not familiar with Bovens - what are they like?

We have a little backyard flock that we are currently keeping under 20. Currently we have 7 buff Orp hens (our major source of eggs), a couple of silkie-cross-something hens that lay itty bitty beige eggs, and sit on anything for anyone. We have one white-crested black Polish hen. We have three mixed breed roosters of assorted sizes, colors and configurations, bloodlines are polish, silkie, orp, and game rooster. We occasionally get "visiting" roosters that apparently think the Orp girls are hotties. We had one big game rooster (mostly Asil, I hink) that showed up - sans tailfeathers - and stayed for a year before moving on. We named him Community Service - he was a volunteer.

These guys share their backyard with three pigmy goats, a potbellied pig and three Swedish Blue Crested ducks.

This spring we are planning on placing an order (we will probably order from McMurray). We're interested in raising and maintaining rare breeds. We expect to add a few orp hens and an orp rooster, plus we'll probably order a dozen (3 roosters/9 hens) Phoenix, a dozen (3.9) Polish (still debating color), and considering a dozen straight run of Sumatran. We will eventually add Faomi, I think. Neither Sumatran nor Faomi are great as pets - much closer to the wild-type jungle fowl in personality, but they are lovely, rare, and worth preserving. I suspect many people do not know that many breeds of domestic farm animals are as close to extinction as many wild animals. Many older breeds are not suitable for larger scale production operations, and so are in danger of being lost.

[Dustin]

The Bovens are strickly a laying chicken(bred for egg production, quality, ect)
I think we go through about 200 ton of feed a week! They produce about 125,000 eggs a day!

I am not that familiar with other many other types of chickens though.

[My Kiwi]

I just loved the Polish chickens ! How beautiful !

I am Polish/Irish meself

[tiger2]

My brother in Az. has a pair of Bantams, they are so funny, i got to put them in their house and ended up chasing one around for a while to catch him!

[Rue]

...we've had fancy chickens in the past...and are getting more as soon as our coop is finished being remodeled!!!...

...the White-crested Polish were my favourites...I'm planning on getting more...

...but we just keep 10-12 (no kill) for eggs...and pets...

[Irish]

I don't much like chickens, but I was very fond of a few "fighting cock"-type roosters that wandered into the property one day and decided to stay (back when I was a kid). My favorite was a big, shiny black rooster with 3" spurs that I christened "Black Bart". My sister had the reddish-brown one, and there was another. All 3 were quite the characters, didn't actually fight among themselves or any of our other chickens (surprising, considering their impressive spurs!), and I used to carry Bart all over like a puppy dog :-).

That said, I much prefer muscovey ducks as pets--they have cute funny faces, sweet personalities, and they get fat and friendly. Easy keepers, too! They roost in trees like a chicken (given a chance) -- ours loved our huge rhododendrons for perching spots.