Community Coops! – A bimonthly feature highlighting the blogs of our partners
Mother Earth News and Grit. This week’s featured blogger is Anna Twitto. Anna and her husband live on a plot of land in Israel where they grow and raise a significant part of their food by maintaining a vegetable garden, keeping a flock of backyard chickens and foraging.

When I first got chickens, I sweated the whole layer box thing. Since I like to take the approach of making my life easy while ensuring the girls have what they need, sometimes I hit a challenge that I make much bigger in my mind that what it really is. Like layer boxes. With my […]

Community Coops! – A bimonthly feature highlighting the blogs of our partners Mother Earth News and Grit. This week’s featured blogger is Jennifer Quinn, who writes from her homestead in rural Virginia. Follow the links below as Jennifer shares the adorable antics of a the newest members of her flock.

Much happenings since I last posted. I got a job! I got laid off! Again! But at least it now frees my time for writing. So I thought I’d start off with a bang and detail my trials and tribulations with a vermin infestation. If you recall, a couple of winters ago, we had a terrible […]

This month’s “Cool Coop” is a great example of the importance of providing adequate space – both inside the coop and within the outside run area. I think a lot of beginning backyard chicken farmers purchase a pre-made coop and then soon realize it doesn’t meet the requirements needed for a flock to comfortably roam […]

Did you know that growing your own herbs is fairly easy to do and can be an added health benefit to both you and your flock of chickens?  Herbs grow well in both containers and directly in the ground.  Most herbs don’t require a lot of water, so if you forget to water them a […]

I was cracking eggs the other day into a bowl to whisk up something yummy and there it was…a blood spot. If you have been raising chickens for a while, you’ve probably seen it.  If you are new to raising chickens, maybe you haven’t seen it…yet.  Fact is, blood spots in eggs most likely will […]

Most chicken keepers are pretty passionate about their flock. At the mere mention of chickens you can bet to rile a heartfelt conversation detailing the things they love best about their collection of birds. By the end of the conversation, they’ll probably be trying to convince you to get your own flock. Chicken keepers like […]

This month’s “Cool Coop” is probably the craziest, most original coop yet! It’s the ultimate example of repurposing or upcycling, and it’s a fully functioning coop as well! Continue to read as John L’Heureux from Litchfield, New Hampshire describes how this unusual coop came to be:   My sister’s step son used to work for a Porta Potty […]

Summer Egg Production…kind of sounds like a play, doesn’t it?  Maybe I should say Summer Egg Production (or lack there of).  Or, how ’bout Summer Egg Production (yes, no, maybe). Remember back when it was Spring time?  The grass and trees were turning green.  The flowers were budding, some even flowering into their full beauty. […]