Do not feed salt water to chickens! I was recently complaining to a fellow chicken keeper about the fact that we had just spent $150 at the feed store to buy heated water buckets for the animals, and that’s not including the electricity used to run them all winter. This is not just for our […]

Guest post by Valerie Boese from Homestead Hustle All chicken owners and breeders should be aware of the recent breakouts of Newcastle disease in California and Utah.  Two hundred ninety-nine cases of Virulent Newcastle Disease have been reported since May 18th in California, and there was one case confirmed last week in Utah which is […]

Keeping your chickens happy and healthy during winter can be a challenge! There are some important care considerations that you will need to keep in mind during the colder winter months to help your flock thrive. In addition to providing high-quality feed and constant access to water, you can help keep the winter blues at […]

This past spring our local feed mill went out of business, with no fair warning – ughh. Leaving us in a bit of a pickle, to say the least. We went to pick up feed one Saturday morning and found a note on the door stating the property was being foreclosed on. What were we […]

Ingredients 1 recipe Basic Gingerbread Dough, chilled 1 recipe Classic Thick Royal Icing Black or brown food coloring gel 4 white Lifesavers candies Red food coloring gel 1 red candy dot or round candy-coated chocolate, such as M&M’s 4 graham crackers 5 silver sprinkles 6 Tbsp white fondant, homemade (page 7) or store-bought Orange food […]

Egg are Seasonal If you’re new to raising chickens you might not realize that chickens do not naturally lay an egg every day, year-round. In the late summer/early fall you might notice that your hens stop laying altogether. You might also notice that your coop is littered with feathers. This is the seasonal molt where […]

Photographs generously provided with permission from Greenfire Farms. Visit their website for more information on acquiring this breed. When I first heard the breed name “Deathlayer” I thought it sounded like something out of a Star Wars movie. I also had to do some research to see if this was, in fact, an actual breed. And […]

  When winter arrives and the safety of the lush green trees is gone, our chickens lose their outside time. See, when the leaves are down the risk of hawk and falcon attacks are so great, we choose to keep them in the safety of the barn. Though they can move about the barn and […]

We all know that winter can be a particularly challenging time for chickens. What with the snow, howling cold winds and hungry predators, winter can be a pretty rotten time. Whilst you can’t change the weather, there are several things you can do to make your chickens’ lives easier. Step One: Keep Their Coop Warm […]

Part of our Breed Profile series This profile by Jennifer Sartell   The Crevecoeur and the Polish are similar looking crested breeds. Both are very old breeds from France. The Crevecoeur is the oldest known French breed coming out of Normandy and the Polish or Poland has been depicted in paintings dated back to the […]