by Meredith Chilson This may sound a little questionable—but isn’t it fun to watch your chickens bathing? My ladies have a couple of nice, deep holes under a fallen branch that they’ve scratched, kicked and dug into smooth-sided depressions just the right size for a couple of hens.  As soon as the ground has thawed […]

by Meredith Chilson This may sound a little questionable—but isn’t it fun to watch your chickens bathing? My ladies have a couple of nice, deep holes under a fallen branch that they’ve scratched, kicked and dug into smooth-sided depressions just the right size for a couple of hens.  As soon as the ground has thawed […]

by Meredith Chilson I grew up on a dairy farm; I remember the urgency of spring “fever”, and I feel it myself on these fresh, green spring days. Spring comes to the farm all at once—we wait through an interminably long winter, it seems, and then—there are baby animals to care for, a garden to […]

by Meredith Chilson I grew up on a dairy farm; I remember the urgency of spring “fever”, and I feel it myself on these fresh, green spring days. Spring comes to the farm all at once—we wait through an interminably long winter, it seems, and then—there are baby animals to care for, a garden to […]

by Meredith Chilson At a craft fair last fall, I struck up a conversation with a young woman—one or the other of us mentioned chickens—and you probably can guess what happened next—we talked until the people around us were beginning to tap their feet and give that “oh, no, she’s talking about chickens again” look […]

by Meredith Chilson   At a craft fair last fall, I struck up a conversation with a young woman—one or the other of us mentioned chickens—and you probably can guess what happened next—we talked until the people around us were beginning to tap their feet and give that “oh, no, she’s talking about chickens again” look […]

                        I never saw a purple chick,                                     I never hope to see one                         But I can tell you, anyhow,                                     I’d rather see                                                 Than be one. My apologies to Gelett Burgess (1886-1951) for the one-word change in the previous […]

by Meredith Chilson  I love to read.  In fact, I have an advanced degree in “Reading” with a certificate here on my wall to prove it. I also love chickens, and I particularly like reading about chickens! Now, it’s possible you may not know this, but one of my first experiences reading about chickens was […]

By Meredith Chilson Do you remember the story of our “Jimmy” chicken? A couple of springs ago, we had a Buff Orpington hen who wanted to be a mother.  She hoarded eggs, puffed and hissed, feathered her nest—but to no avail, because we had no rooster. We tried all the tricks we knew to break […]

by Meredith Chilson Many backyard flocks have a rooster or two—to protect the hens as well as to help create the next generation of chickens.  We had a lovely Buff Orpington rooster living in our family’s coop for a while, in fact. The family rooster I’m going to tell you about now, though, is only […]