The first chicken eggs from the Rush Hour Weekly Drops started hatching at the end of September, and the question in every lobby has moved from “when does it hatch” to “what did I get, and is it rare”. The short answers are three breeds, 34 colors, and nobody knows the odds yet.
Below is every variant, rendered by us straight from the game files, an honest take on rarity, and a few things from the files that most guides have missed, including the fact that you can name your bird three times. If you still have an egg or need help with feeding, our CS2 pets guide covers the whole life cycle. And if your chicken has made you want a nicer pair of hands for the photo booth, you can trade CS2 skins on SkinsMonkey any time.
Three Breeds, 34 Colors: Every CS2 Chicken
Every pet chicken in CS2 belongs to one of three real-world breeds: Catalana, Polish or Silkie. The game never shows you a color name, but Valve's material files do, and that is where the names below come from. Some of them describe the bird better than others. The images are our own renders of each color as an adult hen, made from the game files, so this is exactly what the game draws.
Catalana: 13 Colors
Tan (the default), Black White Head, White, Yellow and Red, Light Blue and Red, Black with Red Head, Blue, Dark Orange, Blue and Light Orange, Orange Blue Neck, Yellow Red Gradient, Grey, Black.
Polish: 12 Colors
Brown (the default), Black with White Head, White with Black Wing Tips, Brown with Black Wing Tips, White Black Head, Blue, Green with Red Head, Green, Pink, Blue Yellow, Orange White Blue, Orange with Black Stripes.
The Polish names are the least reliable of the three. “White with Black Wing Tips” is mostly dark brown, and “Orange with Black Stripes” looks more purple and gold, so go by the picture.
Silkie: 9 Colors
White (the default), Splash, Blue with Red Beard, Leopard, Red, Red Beetle, Orange, Purple, Aqua with Yellow.
Every Chick Is Yellow: When Breed and Color Show Up
You will not know what you have on day one. The game has a single chick model with a single color, so every chick is the same yellow fluffball. Breed and color both appear when it grows into a pullet, and the game's own text for that stage reads “Growing fast, colors coming in, and cleared to deploy with you”. From then on the look stays the same. The hen uses the same model and colors as the pullet and is just bigger.
Which Chicken Is the Rarest? Nobody Knows Yet
Valve has published no odds, no rarity tiers and no seed ranges for chickens. Any site that prints exact percentages for each color is guessing, and so is anyone who calls one breed rarer than another.
The only way to get real numbers is to count a few thousand hatched birds, and that takes time. Until then, treat “the rarest CS2 chicken” as an open question. We will update this list as soon as there is a sample big enough to mean something.
One more thing turned up in the files. There are six chicken materials that no pet color uses, among them a Silkie called “tiger”, a black Silkie, a brown Silkie with a black head and a white Catalana with a tan head. They could be leftovers, textures for the ordinary map chickens or colors Valve is keeping for later. The files do not say, so this part is speculation, and for now none of them is a color you can hatch.
There is also less at stake than with a skin. Chickens cannot be traded or sold on the Steam Market, so a rare color is bragging rights in your lobby and your HatchBook, not money. We explain why in our CS2 chicken eggs article.
Name It Three Times, and Other Things in the Game Files
We went through the pet scripts and text in the current build of CS2. A few details have barely been mentioned anywhere else.
You get one name per life stage. The pet panel allows a name once your egg hatches, and it checks a separate name slot for each stage after that. In practice you can name the chick, name it again as a pullet and once more as a hen.
The photo booth has 11 backgrounds, and most have to be earned. Studio and Picnic are open from the start. Warehouse unlocks once the bird is a pullet. The other eight are real maps (Airport, which is the Baggage map, plus Dust II, Mirage, Inferno, Nuke, Cache, Train and Ancient), and each one unlocks when you finish a match on that map on official servers with an older pet. The game's tip for chicks says it plainly: “Older pets can visit locations with you.”
There is a lot to play with. The booth has 11 poses, 10 hats (from a helmet and a banana to a wizard hat), 7 actions including a dance, 9 effects such as lightning and confetti, 8 filters on top of the normal look, and 7 photo formats from square to vertical 9:16. Since the October 2 patch, the agent in those photos also wears your equipped gloves.
Valve wrote jokes for neglect. If you stop feeding your bird, the “Retirement” messages include “Your pet has accepted a position elsewhere. The offer included meals.” and “Turns out chickens need food. Who knew?” An egg that never gets fed gets “Never loved. Never hatched. Those two are related.”
The October 6 patch also gave the HatchBook translated page titles, so the book now reads properly in other languages.
The Chicken Held Hostage
Not every chicken is having a good week. On October 3 a Reddit user posted an open letter saying he would stop feeding his chicken, Greg, until Valve does something about cheaters. “I can't stop the cheaters. Reporting does nothing,” he wrote. “But Greg? Greg's fate is in my hands.” The post passed 6,300 upvotes, according to esportnow. If he follows through, the game files suggest Greg will not die but “retire”, which is about as gentle as Valve gets.
What Chickens Mean for Your Inventory
Pets sit outside the skin economy. You cannot trade, sell or buy a chicken, and the variant has no market value. The parts of your inventory that do show up next to your chicken are your agent and your gloves, now that both appear in the photo booth. If you want your HatchBook photos to look the part, you can swap skins on SkinsMonkey with instant bot trades. And if you want to unlock map backgrounds faster, Rush matches are short, though check that the map you need counts before you grind.
FAQ
How many chicken colors are there in CS2?
There are 34 color variants across three breeds: 13 Catalana, 12 Polish and 9 Silkie. Other sites sometimes give a different number. The game files also hold a few chicken materials that no pet uses, which may be where the extra entries come from.
What is the rarest chicken in CS2?
Nobody knows yet. Valve has not published any odds, and no one has counted enough hatched chickens to say which variant is the rarest.
When does my CS2 chicken show its color?
At the pullet stage. Every chick is the same yellow, and both the breed and the color appear when it grows into a pullet.
Can you trade or sell a CS2 chicken?
No. Eggs, chicks and grown chickens cannot be traded or listed on the Steam Market.
