Featured Stories
Our Coolest Coops Photo Contest is Back — Starts May 4th
Grand Prize Winner — as chosen by the Backyard Poultry editorial staff — will receive a ChickSafe Eco Automatic Chicken Coop Door Opener from Brinsea, prominent placement in the August / September 2020 issue of Backyard Poultry, a commemorative coop sign, and a copy of Reinventing the Chicken Coop from our bookstore.
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Backyard Poultry June/July 2020
Backyard Poultry June/July 2020 • 15/3 is in-home May 14th but available online NOW! Subscribe for stories on kids in 4-H, FFA, and Grange, picking out roosters before they crow, how to REALLY know if eggs are bad, and a disease profile of fowlpox.
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Need an Egg Incubation Timeline? Try This Hatching Calculator
Use this handy calculator to determine the incubation period: chicken eggs vs duck eggs, goose eggs, turkey, quail, peafowl, guinea fowl, pheasant, and emu. Then set your eggs and watch them develop!
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How Long do Chicks Need a Heat Lamp?
Because they don’t have feathers to self-regulate temperature, newly hatched chicks depend on mothers to keep them warm. Darting beneath wings when they’re cold, and coming out to eat and drink, babies thrive on the mother-to-chick relationship. Brooder chicks must have appropriate heat sources, and humans must closely monitor them with thermometers and good judgment.
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Download our Free Poultry Guides
Need some support with your flock? Take a look in one of our helpful poultry guides!
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Treats for Baby Chicks Can Be Fun and Nutritious
Your initial focus when getting baby chickens was probably the basics: selecting a breed, setting up a chick brooder, and what you can feed chickens. When you were researching this last part, did you consider treats for baby chicks?
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Efficiently Hatching Eggs with a Broody Chicken
Having a broody chicken is one of the most exciting things one can discover in their coop. Learn how to efficiently hatch and raise chicks with a broody.
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Selective Breeding: How to Breed Chickens
For those of us who are learning how to breed chickens or teaching others how to breed chickens, you must realize that breeds of poultry cannot be maintained. Your fowl are either improving or degenerating with each passing generation.
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Baby Chick Health Basics: What You Need to Know
Add to Favorites ‘Tis the season! And, no it’s not a national holiday like Christmas, but it might as well be. It’s chick season! Those adorable balls of fluff are …
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Want Blue Eggs? Pick These Chicken Breeds!
Let’s face it, having backyard chickens is popular, but still pretty unique for most folks. Why not step up the unique a notch and go beyond the standard brown and white eggs by adding blue egg layers to your flock?
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Small and Useful Bantam Chickens
Bantam chickens are the introduction to chickens for a lot of people. They aren’t a breed, but an entire set of chicken breeds.
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The Dutch Bantam Chicken: A True Bantam Breed
The Dutch bantam chicken is said to have originated in the Netherlands. However, historical documents from Europe tell us that the breed was brought into the Netherlands by Dutch sailors who sailed for The East India Company.
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Classic American Chicken Breeds
It’s fun to consider adding some truly American chicken breeds to your backyard. These breeds are the backbone of a hardy, productive flock.
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Breed Profile: Breda Chicken
The Breda chicken is a unique dual-purpose heritage breed from the Netherlands, with striking looks and adorable temperament. Recently, it has become an endangered rare breed.
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The Brakel (Braekel) Chicken
Although not exceptionally rare, the Brakel (alt. Braekel) breed always needs more keepers and is also a historic, interesting race. In Flanders, Belgium where it originates, the “Brakel Hen” is known as the oldest large laying breed that still exists today, the Ardenner being the oldest Belgian breed of the French speaking Waloon area of Belgium.
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