The earliest record of anyone asking “Why did the chicken cross the road?” appeared in 1847, in a monthly New York magazine called The Knickerbocker. The answer, as printed in the magazine: “Because it wanted to get to the other side.” Since then, the question has spawned an infinite number of variations, and even […]
Continue Reading
The easy answer to the question “Why do chickens wipe their beaks?” is because they’re birds. Beak wiping involves rapidly scraping alternating sides of the beak on the ground or other surface. It’s an important activity for all birds, except maybe waterfowl. But why they do it remains something of a mystery, even to […]
Continue Reading
Deciding how many chicks to order can be challenging. Often the determining factor comes down to how many you want, versus how many you need, versus how many your local regulations allow you to have. When starting a laying flock, decide how many eggs you want and size your flock accordingly. As a rough […]
Continue Reading
Chicken owners who collect and hatch eggs from their backyard breeder flocks may be divided into two camps: the so-called propagators or multipliers, who emphasize quantity, and the breeders, who emphasize quality. Both groups hatch lots of chicks. To the propagator, the end goal is the large numbers of chicks. To the breeder, a […]
Continue Reading
A male duck has a penis, unless it falls off. But that’s getting ahead of the story. Like most birds, chickens don’t have a penis. But ducks, geese, and other waterfowl are among the few species that do have a penis. It’s a long, corkscrew appendix that remains inside-out, tucked within the duck’s body […]
Continue Reading
Like the males of 97 percent of all bird species, a rooster does not have a penis. An incubated egg that will become a rooster starts to develop a penis, but early in the second week of embryonic development, a cell death protein called Bmp4 cloaks the incipient penis, causing it to stop developing and […]
Continue Reading
Conventional wisdom says you should never keep turkeys and chickens together, because turkeys are susceptible to blackhead, a disease with devastating consequences. However, lots of backyarders raise chickens and turkeys together without a problem, and with some benefits. Here are three good reasons to keep turkeys with chickens, and two reasons not to. Thumbs Up […]
Continue Reading
Furnishing the type of environment your laying hens seek when they are ready to lay an egg will ensure they lay in the location of your choice. With proper nest boxes, eggs will be laid where you can easily find them, and where they will remain clean and unbroken. Here are ten features hens look […]
Continue Reading
A chicken’s toenails constantly grow, just like a human’s. Unlike a human, though, a chicken can often keep its own toenails trimmed back by scratching the ground while looking for things to eat. Scattering a small amount of scratch grain or some mealworms on the ground encourages chickens to scratch and keep their nails properly […]
Continue Reading
If you’ve never seen a chicken dust bathing, the sight can give you quite a shock. Lying in the dirt while vigorously twitching its feet and flopping its wings, the chicken first looks like it’s having an uncontrollable fit. Then it lies perfectly still in the hole it just dug, looking like death itself. Go […]
Continue Reading