Every summer, health departments all across the country launch campaigns to prevent the spread of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus. West Nile prevention efforts are taken especially seriously in hot southern states where mosquito activity is more prevalent. Humans infected by the virus can exhibit a variety of symptoms, from fever and headaches to more […]
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As if you needed one more reason to grow your own chicken meat, here it is — woody breast, defined as a hardening of breast muscle, resulting in stiff wood-like fibers that make the breast meat difficult to chew. Woody breast is one of three breast meat myopathies (muscle diseases) that plague the poultry industry, […]
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Chickens need to be confined to protect them from the elements and from predators, but what do you call the structure in which they live? Chicken coop is a common term for a stationary structure. The word coop derives from the Old English word cype, meaning a small structure for confining birds. Hen house […]
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A team of researchers from the Dresden University of Technology and the University of Leipzig has developed an innovative new way to sex chicks before they hatch. The technique is 95 percent effective, and could potentially eliminate the need for commercial poultry operations to cull millions of day-old male chicks each year. So how […]
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The heritage Chantecler chicken is a dual-purpose breed suitable for the backyard production of both meat and eggs. It is the only breed of chicken originating in Canada, developed to withstand the rigors of bitter cold winters. The Chantecler hen has a gentle temperament, lays brown-shell eggs, and tends toward broodiness as she […]
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The term “standard breed” is often misused in referring to large chickens, as distinct from bantam breeds. So what, exactly, is a standard breed? A standard poultry breed is any breed that conforms to its ideal description, as formalized (or standardized) by a central organization and compiled into a periodically updated book. The book […]
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Sex link chickens are the result of a first generation cross between two different chicken breeds. As hybrids they tend to be quite vigorous and hardy. Since they mature to be somewhat heavier than chicken breeds developed solely for their outstanding egg laying abilities, most sex links make decent meat birds as well as good […]
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The terms “sex link” and “autosex” both refer to chicks that may be sorted by gender from the moment they hatch. But the two words are not synonymous. Sex link chickens, or sex links, result from mating a hen and a rooster of two different breeds. Autosex chickens are the offspring of a hen and […]
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Like the Roomba robot eternally vacuuming a living room floor, the egg collecting Poultrybot searches for and gathers eggs laid by hens on the chicken coop floor. So-called floor eggs are the bane of every chicken keeper. When Europe banned caged layers, egg producers who turned their hens loose in the coop found that some […]
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