Spring has sprung. Birds are singing, froggies are calling, woodpeckers are drumming, and the earth is fairly bursting sending forth tiny green shoots. More daylight means more eggs in my henhouse, too. I head out to the coop in the morning, smell the fresh spring air, and GAA-ACK… …my boots hit mud. It’s spring, but […]

This is the time of year when it’s dark before dinner and the production from the chicken coop is way down. One egg today? Hurrah! Whether the lack of eggs is from fewer daylight hours, the annual molt, or just the lull before this year’s pullets begin laying (and I’m inclined to believe it’s a […]

….they were dogs. …or possibly cats. …or even, perhaps, a boy. If you’ve followed my blog, you’ll know that my friend and I raise turkeys. They come to us as day old poults, and usually leave in time to be nicely dressed for Thanksgiving dinner. We treat these turkeys like we treat most of our […]

Are you thinking (dreaming) of having your own flock of chickens? Do you know someone who has been poring over hatchery catalogs; spending long minutes following chicken websites; sending you all sort of ideas for chicken coops; talking about Orpingtons, Wyandottes, Sex-Link, and Sussex? My friend Jenny has developed the perfect gift, for you or […]

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.

  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 […]

Some months ago, I received an interesting item in the mail from a favorite company of mine, located on line at www.ChickenWaterer.com. You may recall that I wrote, a year or so ago, about the BriteTap waterer (Product Review: BriteTap Chicken Waterer) …now the same group is offering a BriteTap feeder, and they kindly offered […]

These days the gardens, back porches, side steps, railings and cellar ways are filling up with oversized squashes, odd baskets of cucumbers or buckets of green beans, stalks of garlic and ripening tomatoes. Here, too, the yards, coops, barns, garage and assorted sheds on the homestead are filled with various sizes of poultry! There is […]

Summer party treats (for chickens)! The recipe is on page 3…and the fun and instruction continues right through the very last page –well, actually AFTER the last page, because there’s a bonus pullout poster just inside the back cover. Looking for a wonderful way to share your love of chickens with your kids or grandchildren? […]

Non-traditional? Yes – partly because I have not an ounce of Italian heritage, and therefore I wouldn’t even presume to know (or understand) all the tricks, pinches of that and dashes of this, that go into the Traditional Easter Bread. And partly because even though this recipe does come from my mother’s stash of recipe […]