Featured Stories
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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Backyard Poultry February/March 2020
Backyard Poultry February/March 2020 • 15/1 is in-home January 16th but available online NOW! Subscribe for stories on fowl cholera, all about hatching eggs, imprinting behavior, hip hybrids, PLUS a breed profile of the Bresse-Gauloise chicken!
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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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What to Feed Baby Chicks to Make Them Thrive
Knowing what to feed baby chicks is a critical first step to giving them a fighting chance. Precocial as they may be, chicks are still vulnerable to their environment, which is why we as good stewards must give them the tools to survive and thrive.
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Cats + Chickens = Toxoplasmosis in Humans?
If you have cats and are raising meat chickens, be aware of the potential dangers of toxoplasmosis in humans.
Anyone who has had chickens for more than a few minutes becomes aware of the devastating protozoal disease coccidiosis, which happens wherever chickens are.
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What is Coconut Oil Good For? How About Your Chickens!
What is coconut oil good for in your chicken coop? Well, plenty! We started using coconut oil on our homestead a few years ago, and haven’t looked back since.
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What’s the Best Bedding for Chickens? – Chickens in a Minute Video
Join Backyard Poultry magazine in our video series, Chickens in a Minute, as we answer frequently asked questions about how to raise a healthy backyard chicken flock. In this video, we explore what’s the best bedding for chickens.
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Hatching Duck Eggs: Can Chickens Hatch Ducks?
All of my experience hatching duck eggs led me to ask the question: Will chickens foster eggs from another species and raise them? The answer was, absolutely!
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How Long Do Chicks Need a Heat Lamp?
Do chickens need heat in winter? Only the babies, and only for a short time. But how long do chicks need a heat lamp?
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Understanding Sex-Link Hybrid Chickens
At Backyard Poultry we get questions all the time asking for help identifying the breed of various chickens. Many times the chickens pictured are not purebred chickens at all but crossbreeds / hybrid chickens hatcheries produce for very specific purposes – such as egg production.
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All Cooped Up: Coccidiosis
Coccidiosis in poultry is a common protozoal disease affecting the intestinal tract. It mainly afflicts chickens and turkeys and is found on a global level.
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Setting Up Your Outdoor Chicken Brooder
Everyone needs an outdoor chicken brooder! Learn how to set yours up with or without chicken brooder plans. You’ll thank yourself for this little project!
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Ordering Hatching Eggs: Chickens First Class!
Sunny Miller-O’Connor offers plenty of tips for ordering hatching eggs: chickens, quail, or any other poultry. She has been incubating mail-order hatching eggs for years.
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