Valve shadow dropped chicken pets into CS2

You'd think the most exciting thing to happen in Counter-Strike 2 today would be its new Rush Hour update, complete with a new "fast-paced" mode, or perhaps the fact that you can now silent reload. But you would be wrong, because Rush Hour has been overshadowed by pet chickens.

Chickens aren't new to CS2, they've been clucking around some maps for ages now, you could even walk up to them and get them to follow you. But this is different. You can now get an egg in your weekly drop that's untradeable and will consume both of your allotted drops for the week.

After a week of the egg sitting in your inventory it should hatch into a chick. But I know what you're thinking: "All you get is a pet chick that you can inspect? That doesn't sound very CS2" you would be right, except for the fact that if you look after your chick and feed it chicken feed it can grow up into a chicken with various skins with different levels of rarity; now that's CS2.

There's a normal brown chicken, a white non-bearded silkie, and a tan polish chicken. But it doesn't stop there because there's also apparently 35 various rarities of these chickens which come in different skins. There's bright blue, purple-yellow, blue gradient, nuclear red, toxic green, and much more.

All 35 New Chicken Skins pic.twitter.com/gofDDfdKuRSeptember 23, 2026

You can inspect these grandiose skins as you would a gun, and your little chick and grown chicken can learn tricks. They can run around in a circle (adorable), flap their little wings and fly up a little ways (outstanding), and do a little karate kick (absolute cinema).

All Chick "Trick" Animations pic.twitter.com/fOmcgbvY2VSeptember 23, 2026

After hatching you can name your chick, take it to the photo booth, and let it sit on your shoulder in the loadout screen. When it grows up you'll be able to take it into lobbies and will eventually leave you when it's fully grown, but it's photo will stay on your profile.

It's a little strange considering the chickens aren't mentioned at all in the patch notes, but it's also oddly on brand for Valve to add something like pets instead of, I don't know, trying to fix CS2's anticheat.

2026 games: All the upcoming games
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together