Just found this topic! Great chickens you all have!
Wanted to share my story with my feathery animals, since it is a little too tragic and long.
Since I have always been confined to a small yard in our house and I always wanted to have chickens, specially at scholar years, one day I discovered that there was another type of bird to keep. Quails.
Japonica coturnix
So I went to a farm and got my first couple, very soon, since I took them out every day to the yard, the male went flying away and I could never find him, the female was the one left. This was my first ever loved pet, and by being alone and all day with me, she knew how to get out of the cage by itself (never went back in) but followed me into the house or outside, and answered to some sort of squeek I could make when young, but this birds only live about 2 years, many live a little less, and just like 4 months of getting my first ever digital camera, she died..
So I went back to the farm, and got 2 more, one white and one black, and these did live a very long life, 2.5 years, they even went sometime to school and to the school gardening classess, and the white one got all brown from all the dirt. Both had a happy life and died from age weakness to illnesses I think
While having them, as the white one died first, I got some more, but the farm had already closed, and I went to another farm (that was also closing) and got some more, this time, baby ones, just like 2 weeks old, and with a male I found somewhere else I could make an incubator with a lightbulb and started to hatch my own quails.
So in that days I continued to have an average 4-6 quails all the time. And here comes the crisis of all of this, I never knew what was it, maybe some rat or something small enough to enter, but it literally slaughtered all but one of the quails I had, and that one was a white one that ended up one eye blind, then as she was handicaped, she did not see a sticky rat trap that was on the house and ended up stuck on it, so trying to take her out some tissue got damaged, and made her not be able to walk (so she rolled all over the cage for food an water). And then... I already had some more new quails, and a Boa constrictor entered one night and ate 5 quails!! and it was so stuffed it could not get out by itself...
And guess what, the white, half blind and handicaped quail was the only survivor again!!
And finally all went all right, continuing with the plan with only some of them at the same time, breeding them and no predators at sight (unless my dad ended up some day leaving the cage open and 1 of them went out and a cat ate her). I have taught all of them to be calm enough to eat from my hand, they like to eat a weed that grows in the yard and also tuna cactus, and go crazy after mealworms.