The Pookwife, in her wisdom I was right--you are a guy! (Er--I learned on this forum that to Brits, the word guy is a bit pejorative. In case you are also of that mindset, let me hasten to say that I meant it only to denote a male.)

As to chickens; no, they don't make good pets in the sense of companionship. My relatives on the farm in Tennessee had a henhouse; they'd let Uncle Bennett reach right under them to get their eggs. Not so for me! They'd all scramble off their nests when I opened the door. One time I looked back only to realize in horror that I'd left the door open and they were out. (I was a kid at the time.) The front of the henhouse was flush with the barbwire fence that surrounded the cow pasture; this meant that, to herd the hens that had run behind their house, I had to drop down and roll under the barbwire first on one side, then the other. Luckily for me they all sought the security of the inside, so the whole operation only took a few minutes. I was SO relieved that my carelessness had gone unobserved; it was only much later that my uncle told me he had watched the whole circus, laughing!