Chickens are good at finding places to dust bathe. They will snuggle up between the roots of old trees, lie down in the garden, and fluff their feathers in decomposing mulch. Dust bathing absorbs oil from their skin, and wood ash coats the skin to become a barrier protecting from mite infestations. As a preventive […]
Chickens are spooked easily by sudden changes. Where I live, we haven’t had much of a traditional winter, but last week, the sky fell. In fact, an entire foot of sky piled up around my chicken coop. My dearly departed Red Star Mabel would have trudged through the snow like an Arctic explorer, but since […]
These chicken breeds are excellent foragers, and when allowed to free-range, they’ll do their part to supplement their diet—saving you money on feed.
The hens in our charter flock turned me from chicken agnostic to borderline obsessed. The Girls, as we call them, have officially achieved family status.
Have you ever found little mouse droppings peppered throughout your coop bedding—black oval pellets about the size of a grain of rice? Evidence of rodents in your chicken coop can be unnerving, but it’s important to recognize that winter is a hungry time for wild animals. The reward of a warm bed and a full […]
Jumpstart your flock or increase your current flock’s size with these ways to obtain chicks.
Keeping chickens doesn’t have to be costly. From building the coop to keeping it clean, these inexpensive materials will help make your hens feel like queens.
Modern chickens have been bred to ovulate like gangbusters. On average, an egg is produced every 26 hours when a hen is in her prime. When day-old chicks arrive, not much bigger than eggs, it’s hard to imagine that they’ll ever produce more food than you can eat, but they do! The amount my hens […]
City peeps raise chickens for many reasons that can vary from one backyard coop to the next. If you’re thinking about taking on a flock of your own, give serious consideration to the benefits it will bring you and your homestead. Here are the reasons I think chicken keeping is so great. 1. A Taste […]
When the overnight temperatures began plunging into the 40s this past week, I decided to eliminate the temporary housing the pullets have been living in. Just after dusk, when everyone was having trouble seeing, I scooped up the young girls and popped them into the coop with hens. Forcing territory into a community space was […]
