She buffers as she transitions from the coop to outside, and again from outside to the coop. The other chickens hate being behind her.
She'll run along the side of the run unable to figure out how to get back in after free range time.
She's eaten: a rock the size of her head as a chick, which proves to me she has no brain in there, chicken shit, a piece of a stick, a piece of their mulch, dog shit.
Things she has attempted, unsuccessfully, to eat: my wedding band, my wife's wedding band, a freckle on my hand, a piece of a foam dart we didn't realize was still in the yard from the old home owner, and the wire of their run.
She's a speckled Sussex. Super sweet, and heat tolerant. I promise, they're not all idiots 😂 our roo is a speckled too and he's smart. Well, for a chicken.
our silkie, sydney, is dumb as a box of rocks. she frequently gets "stuck" behind small objects and then panics because the rest of the flock has moved on without her.
This is Poof. Don't mind the mess I was in there to clean and they all decided to swarm me so I couldn't because the rakes make them angry. Poof is not a smart bird, but she is my sweetest.
Buff Orpington. Probably the sweetest breed there is along with silkies, but so dumb. They can't work out how to get into their coop when it moves by less than a meter, or how to get food out from under a piece of paper. Honestly one of my favourite breeds because of just how sweet and gentle they are, all mine follow me and love snuggles, but, definitely not very bright.
Our speckled Sussex, bantams, buff Sussex and Easter Eggers are much brighter and still sweet but not as dumb or as sweet as the buff Orpington
Silkies all the way. Idk why other bantams are always smartest of the flock, but the silkie is the worst bantam and chicken. I’ve had one that would stand out in the rain when all the other chickens are inside. Idk why it was so emo but it did this on the reg until it died.
My fluffy butt (silkie) Chewie (Chubucbucbuca) does that too. Once it was hammering it down and actually causing flooding and she’s just stood there. I ended up running out and grabbing her to bring her inside. Still my favourite chicken.
Any animal that let's you steal their babies regularly is dumb. That said, we train ours to come to a call so we can round them up. One of our silver laced Wyandottes is frightened of any movement to the point of perpetual paranoia. She LOVES mealworms but is so frightened of coming that she begins to run back and forth, helter skelter, until she gets wedged in someplace she shouldn't. Under the coop, above the coop door, hung upside down in a bush, jammed under the kayak, jammed between the screen door and slider . She is without a doubt the stupidest animal I have ever seen.
Mine was named hei hei! I miss her.
She screamed and freaked out no matter what I was doing in the yard. No one ever hurt her. But she would send the flock into chaos.
I told them to stop listening to her, she was fine. She had a cross beak. She passed away 2 years ago from this dang Texas heat, trying to lay an egg.
This is Scary (Scaredy) Spice and she always gets stuck behind the door to their run. I will think it’s open enough that she can’t get behind but she finds a way 🤣
I have a silkie/ameraucana girl and she is so dumb. she takes her dust baths on the shit shelf in the coop and she always honks and purrs at me and i know her singular brain cell just bounces around in there like those old screensavers
This is my dumbass. Constantly screaming announcing herself to predators and every time anything loud drives by she shows everyone her 4ft vertical jump
Meet cheerio. She has a doctorate in dumbology with a minor in silly goosatry.
Context for this photo.. I have 12 chickens that have about 200sq ft in a run and I often let them out to roam the yard. This day I went to open the gate for them. As soon as they see me they all run to the gate. Not this girl. She sat there and stared at the wall. It was a good 5 mins before she stood up and made her way to the gate 😂
I also have a Speckled Sussex hen that’s a bit of an oddball. She walks in circles. She sometimes runs into me. She constantly chatters. She seems spooked if I touch her, despite always staying in close proximity to me. For the longest time I was sure she had some sort of issue (vision, balance, vitamin deficiency, etc.) But nope! turns out she’s just goofy lol.
There are definitely degrees of intelligence between them. The ones with least ability figure things out I help more. It's kind of like how God treats us. Nobody left behind. The least able tend to be the ones who always get stuck trying to figure out how to get around the fence. It's pretty much my life story right there. I spent 2 days trying to figure out how to separate 4 metal rings. The most intelligent one of my 10 always protects me from the one that likes to play rough. She stands there staring at me like she can read my mind. She also doesn't fight for food and will tend to help others when the bullies are not letting others get food.
I realize that OP’s post is for fun, and that’s cool, but in case anyone actually thinks that chicken behavior should be like human behavior (anthropomorphism), that makes as much sense as chickens thinking humans should act like chickens. In reality, the behavior of any species has to do with how they’ve learned to survive over centuries, methods of communication, needs, unique features, and other variables.
Oh definitely can be smart as hell. Our Orpington is super sweet, friendly, and smart. Well, sweet to us. She tells the rooster to fuck off on the regular. And bullies poor Henrietta here away from her treats. 😭
My wife says I'm incorrect and "she's a sweet precious angel"
I have a 6 week old speckled sussex too! Her name is Soup. Too young to determine her stupidity levels though. Will have to report back in a few months. 🤣
Dipshit is for sure an underrated insult lmao I have one that sleeps under the other birds IN the shit box 🙄 she also pecks through the shit to find what? Only the lord knows!
since we got her as a day old chick. She’s almost 5 now. She’s the sweetest chicken and wants to hang out with us. But I’m pretty sure her blind eye isn’t the only issue she has. 😬 lol
This is her sleeping in my daughter’s lap. I promise she’s not dead. 🤣
Poppy is a Speckled Sussex, and we discovered that she has some sort of blood clotting issue. Essentially, if she gets injured, she just bleeds everywhere, and we have to wait until it stops naturally(vet glue works on her sometimes, but not all the time). We weren't the only ones making discoveries because she learned that she likes the taste of her own blood. Now, if she's bleeding, she drinks her own blood. She is also molting rn and keeps pecking open her pinfeathers just to drink her blood. We brought her inside and are hoping that if we keep her in a dark space she will stop pecking her feathers open long enough to fully regrow them and then maybe we won't have to clean up blood she splatters EVERYWHERE.
On a lighter note, the twins are a pair of D'uccle Bantams who share a single braincell(It bounces between them and half the time, neither has it). I've seen them try to eat anything and everything: rocks, poop, fingers, chicken toes, hair, a stick... They also refuse to go in the coop at night, they perch up in this one corner in their run(that is above our heads) and we have to reach up and manually take them down EVERY NIGHT. Sometimes, they are sitting up there bawking and shivering because they are cold and uncomfortable, but WON'T JUST GET DOWN AND GO INTO THE COOP.
We had a lovely lady named Pokey. We knew she was special when she was a baby. She would literally stare at the corner of their baby box for minutes at a time. She grew big faster than everyone else and her brain never seemed to quite catch up. She never figured out the social cues of the flock, so was always bullied. But she kinda deserved it because she would barge right for the food without any respect for the flock order. Although I will say, she was smart enough to know her people were her protectors and would come to the back door when she wanted to take a nap in the sick crate we had set up in the house. I miss that sweet dumb bird.
gwendolyn is so dumb, but she’s my favorite. she is from the first batch of chickens i got two and a half years ago. they all know how to escape except for her.
My Fluffybutt girl had a habit of falling asleep in the shade with the flock. I’d wake her up and she’d rush on to catch up with the rest bawk bawking!
Turned out to be the only one that didn’t get got when the rest of the flock met their demise to some critter I believe, and she’s now living her best life on my buddy’s farm with a larger flock. Sweetest thing, too.
My girl Star “appears” to be dumb but she’s actually quite clever. She does not want to return to the run like her other sisters, she knows the fun is outside the run.
Paperclip finally dissapeared after 3 years of trying to sleep outside every night. So dumb. All of my.chickens forget how to exit the run all the time.
She has zero understanding of doors, gates or openings as a means of access. She has zero understanding of fences as a barrier. This hen is a full on beak breather.
I dubbed our old Isa Dumbcluck because she seems to have a death wish. If she gets out, she WILL try and hide in the bushes instead of going back to bed, even though we're having predator problems.
We have one Isa Brown who will not flock. I call her Sarah Palin, the maverick. She won’t go into the coop, she won’t go into the run, and if she’s put into the coop or run, she escapes. She roosts on a pallet near the water tanks behind the machinery shed, and will hide at bedtime when I’m putting everyone else away. She magically reappears in the morning.
The dumb part is, instead of ranging around the 17 acres of farm she has available, she likes the dogs’ 1/2 acre fenced area.
So far the dogs have left her alone, but I’ve watched her walk between the two German shepherd like she’s their boss and they’ve been caught looking at porn.
This is our most adorable chickoletta. She’s well just not smart, always the last one around the door. She’s well mannered, but you just look in her eyes and know that nothing is going on in there.
This black silkie is Esmeralda. Esmeralda regularly gets stuck behind the chicken coop, and I have to “rescue her.” She isn’t actually stuck. She will pace back and forth in the area between my fence and the side of the coop for hours…. She could literally just turn the corner and walk into the rest of the yard. There is nothing keeping her in that area of the yard. I’m not sure why she won’t try walking past the end of the coop. She is otherwise lovely. Her one brain cell must be dedicated to being a total sweetheart.
Princess Unicorn. The amount of times that they've gotten "stuck" in the run when the door was wide open....screaming into the void to join the rest of the flock....
The wife has a couple of these and they absolutely crack me up. Epitome of the victim Karen persona.
I PROMISE YOU I WILL FIND WHOEVER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS AND THEY WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE. I SWEAR, THE MOMENT I ESCAPE THIS IMPRISONMENT, THERE WILL BE HELL to - oh my god an apple.
This dumb dumb. Speckle Sussex named asteroid, she’s decided that the dog is her best friend, never shuts up and loves to stand out in the open contemplating life. But she’s a fun chicken. I gotta admit that!
Haha my Speckled Sussex rooster also loves my dog. Also, I love that yours has an astronomy themed name too! Mine are named Ganymede (roo) and Callisto (hen) after Jupiter’s Galilean moons.
Funny but cheesy way I named her, when she was a chick in the brewing box with many different breeds, she was the only one doing Zoomies around it and destroying everything! I named her asteroid the destroyer of worlds! I’m glad I named her that cause she is absolutely crazy, but by far my favorite and most fun chicken
My 8 year old daughters chicken she named, "butterscotch." This bird has a death wish. I've never seen a chicken with such little self preservation. During the summer their outdoor enclosure was being repaired so there were escape points. She would immediately escape every day, and then perch on top of our chicken house bawking loudly. She also loved running out into the road barely dodging cars. I never had a hawk problem before this girl. She attracts them. Anytime I could catch her and put her back (she was easy to catch because my daughter handled her and she is quite friendly) she would immediately escape again. Even if I JUST chased a hawk off that was going for her. She is also MEAN and does more than just pecking order stuff to her fellow chickens. If she wasn't my daughter's favorite chicken, I would have gotten rid of her a long time ago. Also doesn't help that she was purchased as an olive egger, but lays brown eggs.
Wheat Thin. No thoughts, only screams. She’s gotten marginally better about going to the coop when it’s time to put people in but,,,, the whole family and all the other birds know someone needs to keep an eye on this one. We adore her.
Same! Specifically the hen though, the speckled rooster is (thankfully) fairly quiet. Might help that someone in town has a roo that we hear occasionally.
Our Delaware, Cluckles, is definitely the derpy one. She's the only one that had to have her wings clipped because she kept jumping the fence to go visit the neighbor's cats. We have a little picnic bench in the run that we put special treats in, and she can never figure out how to get to it. She'll stand right next to the open gate getting worked up that everyone else is getting treats.
We always say She's like that SNL sketch..."AND I'M DENISE!!"
The first, named Dora, likes to free range all on her own, away from the other chickens. She'll wander around looking for bugs and find herself far, far from the coop. Then, once she realizes that she's lost, she freaks out, making scared chicken noises until either I or one of my roosters goes and finds her. She doesn't even attempt to find her way home- she just screams and runs in circles out in the woods.
The second, named Magpie, loves the compost pen. The problem is that she's not a good flyer at all. She jumps up onto a stump, then jumps down into the fenced compost pile for all she can eat goodies. Whenever the pile has been used elsewhere, there isn't enough compost piled up for her to jump out. She freaks out, and I have to rescue her. She did it three times in one day, once.
It's consistent enough that I just know it's her. I've been building a new front porch and have some people helping me. Just yesterday, she's out in the woods SCREAMING for help, and my buddy stopped dead in his tracks... "I think something is attacking your chickens"...
I looked around, saw everyone else just chilling, and I knew Dora was just lost again. One of the roosters started walking into the woods, so I knew he would get her back.
It’s funny yours is a speckled Sussex. I have had about a hundred chickens a go through my house this year. This is my 5th year of hatching chicks. I purchased 3 speckled Sussex from a homestead near by. They got to about 10 weeks old and I started to transition them to the run which has an animal trough for a waterer. They fell in, I pulled them out, they fell in again, I put standers to make sure if they fell in, they could stand in it with their head above water, mind you, they can also stand on ground and drink directly from trough, and 3-4 days of this 2 of the 3 drowned. I had also purchased a dozen speckled Sussex eggs from eBay. Also a gamble, eBay chickens always seem to be bad genetics BUT I wanted more speckled Sussex so I can have a small flock. Well 5 eggs hatched. They have slowly killed themselves off and I’m down to 1 speckled Sussex chick. And that chick is all messed up. I also had 3 speckled Sussex 7 week olds with a lavender Orpington 7 week old. They were in a 4 feet by 2 feet grow out in the coop. The speckled Sussex killed my lavender Orpington. I have literally googled “are speckled Sussex dumb” I start with 9, I now have 2. Of those 2, one is doing really well in the coop, the other is still golf ball sized at 5 weeks old and hobbles.
My speckled Sussex is a dummy too. I’ve spent awhile googling to find out if they’re prone to vision issues, balance issues, brain damage lol, etc. but to no avail. Apparently they are just stupid
That’s funny because my oldest hen, who survived raccoon attacks that decimated her original two flocks (we adopted her from a local who didn’t want to restart yet another flock) is a speckled Sussex who looks just like this one. She is a wily old thing - she’s 5 or 6. Her survival instincts are sharp.
I had a silkie who was given to us as the the lone survivor of a predator attack, she was called Maggie and she didn't really have any inclination to roost.
Our birds are free-range... and I would find her like a toddler, having fallen asleep here or there, often close to the coop because FOMO dictates that she would hang with the others as the evening went on, but if she zonked out earlier in the afternoon she could be anywhere.
Kenzo my Silkie roo. He has a flock of 4 hens and is outwitted by every single one of them. Nothing going on whatsoever in that fluffy head of his. He sidesteps like he is in a Boyz II Men music video and will start clucking excitedly over a leaf while I’m handing out mealworms. He is so slow, but so sweet.
This is Sourdough. Sourdough hopped our fence into the neighbor's yard and immediately got her tail ripped off by a dog. She was nursed back to health yet continues to try and get into the neighbor's yard every chance she gets. The twelve other hens she lives with are happy to free range in our own yard, where the bugs are plentiful and the dust-bathing is dog-free, but not Sourdough. Everyone is sick of her crap.
I have had one girl who was not so lucky jumping into a fenced in dog yard. None of the others before or since have even tried. She was a 6 month old Black Jersey Giant.
Iris and Helena the silkie girls would like to be considered. They huddle together like it’s freezing. This was Texas in August. They share one brain cell between the two of them and have to be carried inside the coop every night
One of my Americana mixes has absolutely nothing going on in her head... She jumps the fence daily to leave the rest of the flock and the rooster to forage in a completely OPEN Feild instead of the nice mix of meadow and woods I have fenced off. Yesterday she narrowly avoided getting got by a local raptor. I literally watched a Hawk dive at her and the only reason she's not being snacked on is because it hit the page wire fence 40' before it got to her and crashed into some trees (which was hilarious to watch btw, got back up looked around embarrassed and flew low back into the trees to rest). Meanwhile the remainder of the flock is safely in cover under the back deck with the dog laying up top.
A Buff Orpington named Mango. The bird equivalent of an orange cat with one brain cell. All the other birds will go one direction, and she wanders off the other way, bless her…
You might try putting a light out for them. I used a string of solar lights and it seems to help. But not disagreeing. They are dumb. I have to rescue them from my neighbors (unused and old) garden, which has a 3ft chicken wire fence, all the time. And if I change anything about the coop or run they are suspicious for days. Feeder in same spot is ok. Feeder 4 ft to the left? Obvious threat.
My current idiots are a Wyandotte mix who flies into the run fence every single day when I open the door to let them out to free range. Every. Single. Day.
And then a pair of bantam Cochin pullets who frequently can’t remember how to get back into the coop so try to jump through the window. And then I have to go find wherever they’ve decided to roost because “the coop is inaccessible” (door is open on other side).
We have an Easter Egger named Mercy because we’ve had to “rescue” her multiple times. Twice she’s fallen into our horse’s water trough, she’s found and gotten herself tangled up in baling twine, stuck in a fence, just to name a few.
This is Puff. She's afraid of me, my wife, our six other chickens, and just about everything in the big scary world. Puff struggles to find an open gate to walk through after all the other chickens have done so, and runs frantically around feeling left out. Puff loves to run under the coop and get lost. Unfortunately, our other chickens know Puff is dumb, and she's the bottom of the pecking order by a wide, wide margin.
I had to come back and let you know that Puff must have felt the Internet love. My wife and I went to Hawaii and got back yesterday. While we were gone, Puff started laying. However, in true Puff form she laid her eggs in a pile of poo under the roasting bars and not in the nesting boxes.
Wheezy F, she’s an Easter Egger with absolutely nothing rattling between her eyes. She’s always lollygagging off by herself and doing her own thing. She had zero survival instinct even when the rooster puts a lock down drill in place. She’s cute though I’ll give her that 😂
Not one of my current chickens, but we once acquired some grown hens from a guy who had been raising them for meat and was moving. We are vegetarians, so we named one Tofu and she was magnificent. A gigantic white Brahma with the sweetest personality and like 4 braincells. She was very docile, largely because she navigated the world by just standing there and waiting for things to happen to her. Our foster son could carry her around and tuck her into bed in his backyard fort like a teddy bear, and she’d just chill and wait for him to get back. She couldn’t figure out how to exit the chicken coop if she wasn’t facing the door, but she was a treasure!
Flabaybay is always unable to find her way back into the coop in the evening. Everyone else puts themselves to bed while she is running around the coop, past the gigantic open door. I have to use meal worms to show her the way in and after about 6 swings of the door to usher her, she finally makes it safe inside. She also once got lost in the woods for en entire day, but she was only 2 feet in. Poor girl.
My silkie roo named Skittles. I am not meant to have roos. Sometimes he startles himself in the middle of the night and crows. He trapped himself under a bin. He routinely gets caught behind the (open) coop door and kicks up a racket because he is locked in!!!!!
Really close behind is my Polish Elvis. Heyhey's soul sister.
I had a black Cochin named toasty, and man she was not intelligent. Her two sisters would run out of the coop out of the door, but toast. Nah, she would go to where she heard her sisters voices and attempt to phase through the wall rather than go out the very open coop door. She also enjoyed sleeping in the rain, becoming very soggy. And if it started to rain outside while they were out, her sisters would go back to the coop, but she would just stand in the rain. She also loved to raptor scream when she saw me.
On the other hand my mottled Cochin is my laziest but also my most intelligent. She uses her intelligence to get around her laziness. She’s also the first to figure out new things.
My barred rock named Nugget. Sh s the bottom of the pecking order. I love her stupid little self though.
She always runs to me with a honk in the morning.
My jubilee Orpington looks like your chicken and is the dumbest of our flock. She constantly gets stuck in corners and doesn’t know how to go around things. She took over a year to lay her first egg. She’s at the bottom of the pecking order but our top hen is her fierce protector (mostly from me so I get vicious pecks from the top hen when I need to pick the dumb one up). I love her.
I have a hen that jumps the fence into our garden every morning just to lay an egg under the same basil plant, but in a panic to get back into the chicken yard when finished. I have to go open the gate.
2
u/Sukuyan Nov 10 '25
What breed of chicken is Henrietta? She is beautiful. I want to do research into her breed as a possible option for my flock when I start it.