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How to Protect Your Chickens from Frostbite

How to Protect Your Chickens from Frostbite

Frostbitten combs can be a problem for chickens that live in damp, drafty conditions during freezing weather. Toes may also be frostbitten, but not as commonly as combs and wattles, especially when the chickens have a place to rest where their feet are not in direct contact with a frozen surface. The easiest way to […]

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The Best Mating Ratios for Poultry: How Many Hens per Rooster?

The Best Mating Ratios for Poultry: How Many Hens per Rooster?

The optimal mating ratio for chickens, turkeys, and other poultry is not the same ratio in which they typically hatch. Most poultry naturally hatch approximately 50 percent females and 50 percent males. If your goal is to obtain fertile eggs for hatching, that ratio will result in males fighting excessively with each other, and when […]

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How to Provide Comfort Roosts for Your Chickens

How to Provide Comfort Roosts for Your Chickens

At dusk, chickens instinctively seek a high place to spend the night where they feel safe from predators. Lacking a comfortable place to roost inside their coop, they may seek an outdoor roost. It might be the top of a fence or gate, in a tree, or even on the coop roof. Chickens that roost […]

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What Do Baby Chicks Eat?

What Do Baby Chicks Eat?

Newly hatched poultry come equipped with yolk reserves that provide baby birds with nutrients for many hours after they hatch. It’s nature’s way of allowing the early hatchers to remain in the nest until the whole brood has hatched. Hatchery chicks shipped by mail take advantage of these yolk reserves during the day or two […]

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Studies Find Light and Sound Can Affect Chicken Productivity

Studies Find Light and Sound Can Affect Chicken Productivity

Nothing can foul up your day like losing sleep to the persistent beeping of a dying smoke detector. And is there anything more agitating than waking up from a dead sleep with a bright line shining in your eyes? We rely on a good night’s sleep to get the rest and relaxation we need to […]

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How to Remove Dried Mud Caked on a Chicken’s Shanks and Toes

How to Remove Dried Mud Caked on a Chicken's Shanks and Toes

Anyone who has had chickens for more than a few days soon discovers that they will eat or trample all the vegetation growing near their coop, eventually turning lush grass into bare soil. In a rainy climate, or during times of unusually heavy rainfall, the soil can rapidly become a sea of mud in which […]

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When Will My Hen Start Laying Eggs?

When Will My Hen Start Laying Eggs?

The age at which a healthy hen lays her first egg depends, in large part, on her breed. Chicken breeds that are developed primarily for high egg production may start laying soon after they reach four months of age. Many backyard breeds start laying at the age of about 5 months. Chicken breeds that are […]

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Four Kitchen Scraps Not to Feed Your Chickens

Four Kitchen Scraps Not to Feed Your Chickens

Chickens have a wide range of likes and dislikes when it comes to what they eat. Unless they don’t otherwise get enough to eat, most chickens won’t eat things that are bad for them, or at least they are unlikely to eat enough to make them sick. Feeding kitchen scraps can be a nutritious way […]

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