The bacterium causing coryza can survive in areas with little oxygen available, such as water or feces. This bacterium lives in chronically ill chickens that appear healthy but are carriers of the disease due to previously encountering it.

Over the past 100 years there have been many methods developed to tell the sex of baby chicks; some methods proved haphazard, some have proven quite effective.

Pasty butt can kill the chick fairly quickly if not treated immediately, so knowing how to treat this condition is important.

Nails that don’t naturally wear down need to be periodically trimmed. Cocks may need to have their claws trimmed to prevent injury to hens during breeding, and chickens groomed for showing must have their nails neatly trimmed to successfully compete.

There are two definitions of free-range chickens.
In commercial chicken raising, the USDA says “free range” chickens must be allowed access to some outdoor space. If chickens only have access to a gravel yard, or just spend a few minutes with doors open, they can be called free range birds.

Wing feathers may be trimmed to protect chickens from predators or keep them from getting run over on the road, to protect vegetable and flower beds, or to keep the birds from getting into the wrong breeding pen.

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.

Whether you are a first-time homesteader on a journey to learn how to raise ducks or have hatched more flocks than you can count, here are 10 duck raising questions that both novices and experts often have.

If stored incorrectly, your chicken feed can make your birds sick, make them stop laying, or in extreme instances, kill them.