The other day I saw two of our chickens pecking and scratching a shallow hole in the ground.  They were making a new dust bathing area. They scooted around.  They spread their feathers.  They pecked some more.  They were working together on this one…great team work!  Notice the black chicken supervising the job.  She clucked […]

How much space does a chicken need to comfortably rest at night? Is a roosting bar an essential element in poultry housing?

There are those who will argue that corn contains all the nutrients necessary for a chicken to survive, and they may not be wrong. What they might not understand is that a chicken’s body is not able to utilize all those nutrients.

Did you know that chickens have 4 types of feathers? These include webbed feathers, down feathers, bristles and filoplumes. Each type of feather has a different function.

Stories from the good ‘ol days (while processing chickens). We did it…Hubby and I (along with my parents) processed some chickens. Don’t worry…I’m not going to detail the butchering process. Instead, I’m going to tell you how we learned more about the good ‘ol days.  You know the good ‘ol days when life was simpler, full […]

I was recently asked “how often do you clean out the chicken coop?” Well, the answer can vary, depending on: how many chickens you have where the nesting boxes are compared to the roost area how much time the chickens spend inside the coop where do you keep their food and water the time of […]

The Big Red Barn isn’t our “chicken coop” per se, but about a third of our chickens call it home. We call them…you guessed it, the “barn chickens”. Some of our chickens are anti-social and though we have a perfectly functioning chicken coop with amenities to fit every chicken’s needs and desires, some prefer to […]

  Out here in western New York, Labor Day signals the return to school. School buses flash their lights through the foggy mornings; children are hustled out the door with new backpacks, uncreased paper and unused erasers. It has been many years since the school bus stopped at the end of our driveway, but in […]

*Warning* this post discusses some disgusting yet important information for keeping a flock of healthy chickens. Clean drinking water is probably the single most important thing you can do to keep your flock healthy. In this post I’d like to discuss the correlation between clean drinking water and a condition called Pasty Vent, which if […]

I have struggled with putting my words together for this post. However, I do believe that it is important to share this … to show that homesteading is not full of good times only. Homesteading is physically hard work. It can also be emotionally hard. In dealing with this, my emotions have been all over […]