head
How to Keep Your Hens Happy
Keeping your hens happy is easy once you know what motivates their behavior. Nearly all of a chicken’s activities are motivated by three basic needs: to get enough to eat, to avoid being eaten, and to make more chickens.
Read More
Do You Need Toys for Chickens?
Professionals agree chickens need enrichment. Keeping your flock healthy, either for egg or meat production or companionship, is most likely your primary goal. Maintaining healthy chickens is a process that includes many facets, including environmental, social and physical aspects.
Read More
How Do Chickens Lay Eggs?
“I can’t buy your eggs anymore,” was the astonishing announcement made by a college student who had been one of my best customers. I had to know what was going on.
Read More
How to Protect Chickens from Hawks
When I walked out to the chicken coop and looked up, I was horrified to see a red-tailed hawk calmly eating one of my White Leghorns. When the hawk spotted me, it flew off and dropped the Leghorn’s body.
Read More
Tips for Raising Runner Ducks
Keeping Runner ducks combines the benefits of raising poultry with the entertainment of watching penguin-like bowling pins forage around the yard. After dabbling in call ducks, I increased my flock to include Fawn and White Runner ducks.
Read More
The Dorking Chicken and Other Classic Breeds
Most of the 200 breeds and varieties of chickens that were once common on farms are now considered rare. Including a breed that is part of our history in your poultry operation gives your flock a role in historic preservation and genetic diversity.
Read More
All About Nankin Bantams
Add to Favorites By Don Cable, California — Nankin bantams are wonderful chickens for those interested in the history of poultry keeping and especially bantam breeds. Formerly known as the …
Read More
8 Interesting Features of the Silkie Chicken Breed
Silkies are distinctly different from any other chicken breed. They share a unique combination of genetic and behavioral features. In 2003, a group of Japanese researchers mapped the mitochondrial DNA of a Silkie to determine the breed’s genetic position in relation to other birds in the genus Gallus.
Read More
Twas the Night Before Christmas — Chickens Edition!
Add to Favorites With apologies to Clement C. Moore. The following should prove to all the children out there that Santa visits good chickens, too. I’ve changed some of the …
Read More
Chicken Pecking Order — Stressful Times In The Coop
Add to Favorites If you added new chicks to your flock this year, you are probably going through the steps to safely integrate them into the flock. The chicken pecking …
Read More