Moving can be tough, especially when animals are involved. If you’re relocating to a new property and taking your flock with you it’s important to keep their health and safety in mind—both during traveling and when it’s time to introduce your flock to their new coop. One of the options when moving your ladies […]
Last weekend, my husband and I finally finished cleaning out the old shed for what we’re dubbing a “Barn Razing.” It’s been a year in the making, so the event of destroying the old structure deserved a quality name. Among things that needed to be thrown away: a nearly empty bag of old straw bedding […]
Today, I’m sitting on nine dozen eggs. I wash them after collecting them to store in the refrigerator. This way, they’re ready to go if I get the chance to sell or gift them. Unfortunately, we’re having a problem. One hen’s brown eggs are so delicate that when I wash them, they crumble to […]
This disease is bad news for poultry, poultry farmers and consumers of poultry products.
Gardening with chickens can be a lot of fun. They’re often underfoot (and under shovel) doing some of the grunt work, like removing weedy sprouts and wriggling ground pests. The problem is that chickens don’t know when to stop helping. Growing food in small spaces is challenging enough on its own, but add a […]
Some chicken coop designs are inspired by imagination, and others by practicality. I never get bored of seeing the creativity and hard work people put into building their coops. Thanks to social media and chicken keepers who like to show off their innovations, we can all be inspired to build our own coops for […]
The charm of a small yard with a flock of hens is indisputable, but raising chickens in the city can present some aesthetic challenges. If your coop is stationary, you probably have a uniform plot of brown underneath the run. If you have a mobile coop, maybe you have some circles worn into the […]
High-school girls with attitude have got nothing on a flock of hens turning on one of their own.
My chickens love the explosion of insect life in the spring—and so do I, but it wasn’t always that way. In my life before chickens, my Kentucky backyard was unusable for several months of the year, simply because of blood-sucking insects. Because my chickens devour a majority of the bugs that bug me most, […]
During a recent chicken check, I discovered mites in my flock. One was crawling on a fresh egg in the coop, and many more were zig-zagging across a hen’s vent area. I took immediate action, of course, but I still get the willies when I think about it. Mites prefer a chicken’s warmest body […]
