Dreaming about
chickens

Chickens are so familiar that people forget how much of English they've shaped. We call a coward chicken, warn against counting chickens before they hatch, and say a bossy friend acts like a mother hen. Even "pecking order" comes from them, from a Norwegian zoologist's studies of how hens rank one another. Dreaming about chickens usually draws on that everyday picture. It tends to point to fear or a lack of nerve, the fuss of small worries, or caring for people who depend on you.

What the chickens were doing tells you which. A hen sitting calmly on her eggs is a different dream from a flock pecking at your ankles, and a rooster crowing outside your window is different again. What chickens mean to you matters as well. Someone who grew up feeding hens in the yard and someone who has only ever met a chicken in a supermarket (wrapped in plastic) will read the same dream in different ways.

What dreaming about chickens means

Most chicken dreams come back to the bird's best-known habits, its nervousness, its constant fuss and its care for its chicks. Three readings come up again and again.

Fear or holding back

Being "chicken" is backing out of something out of fear, and that's often what the dream is getting at. Were you a chicken in the dream, or running from something with chickens around you? Then ask whether there's a challenge you've been avoiding. It might be a conversation, a risk or a decision you keep finding reasons to put off.

Small worries and busy fuss

Chickens scratch and peck and run about all day, and a yard full of them can be a picture of a life full of small tasks. If the dream felt chaotic, with chickens everywhere, it may be about the dozens of little demands that keep you busy without getting you anywhere. "Running around like a headless chicken" describes it well, and the expression is grimly accurate, since a chicken can keep moving for a while after its head is cut off.

Caring for others

A hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and that's one of the oldest images of protection there is. Chickens in a dream, especially a hen with chicks, can be about looking after others, your children, a team, a parent who needs you. If you felt warmly toward the hen, the dream may be about care you give or receive. If she was frantic, ask whether the caring has become exhausting.

Dreaming about eating chicken

Eating chicken is one of the most ordinary meals there is. So the dream is usually about comfort and everyday nourishment (a Sunday roast, a soup someone made when you were ill). Fried chicken leans toward indulgence or a treat you feel you've earned. If you ate with family, the dream may be about belonging, and if you ate alone, about looking after yourself. The page on eating goes into food dreams more widely.

Dreaming about raw chicken

Raw chicken is food that isn't ready, and that can be dangerous to eat. In a dream it often points to something rushed, a plan launched too early, a relationship moving too fast, a decision you made before you had all the facts. If you were about to serve it to other people, look at whether something you're offering isn't quite ready yet. And if you ate it anyway, the dream may be asking why you went ahead.

Dreaming about chickens laying eggs

Hens laying eggs are about productivity and potential, things coming into being one at a time. It often comes when you're in a productive period, or when you're waiting for a plan to hatch. If you were collecting the eggs, the dream may be about reaping the rewards of steady work. But if you were counting them before they hatched, the old proverb has a point, and the dream may be about a hope you're relying on too early.

Dreaming about a rooster crowing

A rooster crowing is a wake-up call in the most literal sense. In a dream it often comes when something you've been ignoring is asking for your attention, an alarm, a deadline, a truth you've been avoiding. But a rooster strutting around the yard is a different image, closer to pride and showing off. Did it remind you of someone who likes to be the loudest voice in the room?

Dreaming about chickens attacking you

Being pecked by chickens is an odd dream, since they're hardly fearsome animals. That's often the point. It tends to be about small criticisms and petty attacks, a colleague who keeps nitpicking, a family that comments on every choice, being "henpecked". None of them is dangerous alone. But together they wear you down, and the dream makes that visible in a slightly absurd way.

Dreaming about baby chicks

Chicks are new, fragile and fluffy, so they tend to stand for new beginnings, a baby, a project, a fresh start. A dream of chicks often comes with a feeling of tenderness and responsibility. And if one wandered off or got hurt, look at what new and vulnerable thing in your life you feel anxious about keeping safe.

Dreaming about chickens according to Jung and Freud

Neither reading below is one Jung or Freud gave of chickens. Each applies an idea of his to the yard.

Jung: the hen as a mother figure

Jung's essay on the mother archetype gathers what stands for the mother in dreams and myth: the earth, a garden, a well, the cow, a hare, or any helpful animal.^[1] A hen gathering her chicks under her wings is the kind of sheltering animal that list has room for, so a dream hen may say less about poultry than about who mothers you or whom you mother. The other reading above, being "chicken," suits his shadow: the nerve you lack in daylight can show up at night as a bird that runs.

Freud: chicks and the day before

Freud's list says small animals stand for small children,^[2] and chicks are small, many and easy to lose, so a dream of a flock of them may be about the children in your care. He also began with the day before, and chicken is dinner in a lot of homes, so a roast or a raw bird may only be what you cooked yesterday.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of chickens in dreams

The hen and the rooster both have a place in the Gospels, and the Talmud reads the hen as a good sign.

The hen and the rooster in the Gospels

In Matthew, Jesus looks over Jerusalem and says he would have gathered its children "as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings".^[3] It's one of the tenderest images of protection in the Bible. The same gospel has the rooster's most famous moment. Jesus tells Peter he'll deny him three times before the cock crows,^[4] and when the bird crows, Peter remembers and weeps bitterly.^[5] A rooster in a dream can carry that same sharp moment of realizing you've let someone down.

The hen in the Talmud

The Talmud, the foundational text of Jewish law and thought after the Bible, reads a hen in a dream as a sign of a lovely garden and joy.^[6] The reading rests on a pun (the Aramaic word for hen is taken as the initials of the words for "a lovely garden and joy"), so it says more about how the rabbis played with words than about hens.

Questions to ask about your chicken dream

Chicken dreams are easy to laugh off, so it helps to go back over them with a few serious questions.

• What were the chickens doing, laying, pecking, crowing or running around?
• Were you one of them, feeding them, eating them or running from them?
• Did any of them remind you of someone?
• Is there something you've been too nervous to do?
• What in your life is about to hatch, or has hatched too early?

Oniri works from details like these to read a dream, which is how a hen in one person's dream ends up about their children and in another's about their job.