About the Author

Doug Ottinger

Articles by Doug Ottinger

How to Break Up a Broody Hen
August 27, 2019 · · Flock Files

There may be times when a broody hen is not in your best interest. Broodiness is infectious. Once one hen starts setting in earnest, it is highly likely that another hen will also start. And then another. Before long, there goes your egg production, most likely for several weeks. How do you break a broody hen?

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How Long do Chickens Lay Eggs? Breeds that Go the Extra Mile!
August 11, 2019 · · Chickens 101

How long do chickens lay eggs? Even hens from the best egg-laying chicken breeds eventually stop producing. Here is some general information about length of egg-production and some breeds that seem to have extra-long laying lives.

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What Breeds Go The Extra Mile?
June 22, 2019 · · Flock Files

I polled a large number of veteran chicken keepers as to what they believed were the best egg-laying chicken breeds. For a breed to even be considered, one stipulation was that the breed had to lay at least three or four eggs per week and had to keep laying fairly consistently for at least three or four years. Most breeds chosen were brown-egg-layers.

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Sex-Links and the W Chromosome
March 14, 2019 · · Chickens 101

Add to Favorites For years, sex-linkage in fowl has been a well-known and fairly well-understood fact. All birds have a “ZZ/ZW” sex- chromosome system. That is, males have two Z …

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