Your hen is squawking whenever you approach her, and she won’t leave her nesting box. What’s wrong, is she ill? Far from it, and chances are she is just a broody and wants chicks. If you aren’t planning on having chicks, this can be problematic because the hen in question will stop laying eggs. Whatever […]
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There are not too many greater pleasures in life than strolling down to the bottom of your garden, reaching into your nest box, and pulling out a freshly laid egg. If you time it just right, the egg will still be warm! You joyfully walk back inside and take the egg into your kitchen to […]
Read More… from How To Store Your Chickens’ Freshly Laid Eggs
When I have a little brooder full of chicks, I love to know whether I have a little cockerel or pullet. It isn’t an easy task to determine the sex of chickens. In fact, I have spent many years trying to find the best way to determine who is who in my young flocks. It […]
Read More… from How to Sex Chickens: 5 Methods To Determine Hen Or Rooster
When you decide to raise chickens for meat, you’ll undoubtedly have questions about how to get the best dressed-out bird and how to care for them. Since the COVID-19 pandemic there have been serious questions being asked by individuals and families around the world. These questions include how to become self sufficient in sourcing protein […]
Most hobbyists and quail farmers are the first to tell you that raising quail free-range, in any sense of the word, is not a good idea. However, if you have your mind made up, and know nothing would make you, or your quail, happier than allowing them access to the world, read on for some […]
Often when I’m handing over a dozen eggs to a new egg customer, they ask me how long my eggs can be stored before they ‘go bad’. This opens up a rabbit hole of other questions and bits of information people are likely not to know about with respect to storing, washing, keeping, and eating […]
Cute, fuzzy, lovable and delicate – baby chicks, who doesn’t love them? Today we are going to run through the needs of these little creatures and give you some tips and tricks on how to raise baby chickens, making them happy and healthy without breaking the bank! There are two things that are essential to […]
Our ‘topic of today’ is all about how chickens make and lay those delicious ‘cackleberries’ that we all love! We usually don’t think too much about the ‘how’ of egg laying – I think it is fascinating – I hope you will agree. It is a long and fairly complex process which can occasionally be […]
Sounds like a simple question right? However, there are many costs to ‘having a chicken’, so today we are going to meander through the cost of the birds and their associated needs. Roughly speaking your costs can be divided up into the chickens, feed, housing and maintenance or fixed costs. Without a doubt the most […]
Here in the Northeast, we have been blessed with seemingly unending hot, humid days with little to no rain. For us humans, we simply retreat to the air-conditioned house, but what about your flock? Chickens can’t sweat like us, nor can they remove their feather jackets, so what can we do to help them keep […]