We began our backyard chicken keeping experience in the spring of 2010 with five chickens and a much smaller coop (similar to this coop) than we have now without really thinking about how much space chickens need to be happy, healthy and productive. At the time, we were simply very excited and proud of what we had built and our new…
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Keeping chickens over the past few years has been quite the adventure in both the actual keeping of chickens and in the human response to the fact that we keep chickens. Conversations are either based around confusion or excitement! I get questions all the time like; You can keep chickens in the city? Is it expensive to keep chickens? I’ve…
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Teeny, tiny flies…tons of them…in our chicken scratch. We’ve been keeping chickens for a few years now and I have never seen this before! I first saw them on Saturday when I went out to feed the Ladies. I opened up the Scratch Bin and noticed a few tiny flies, but didn’t think anything of it. Then, as I scooped…
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Downsizing our Flock
After much consideration and many conversations, we decided to downsize our flock. What started out as 5 laying hens in a our first handmade coop just a few years ago grew to 20 and was most recently sitting at 19. While, in the grand scheme of things, 19 is really not that many hens, it had become too many for…
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Chicken love dirt baths, which is a very good thing since dust bathing is actually good for them! Not only do dust baths encourage preening and fight against parasites, they make for happy chickens (which is helpful in keeping the whole flock happy). Some people install dust bathing areas for their chickens and include dirt, soil, ashes and diatomacious earth.…
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You know that compost overhaul I talked about a couple of days ago? Well, apparently there was a wealth of worms living in one of the bales of straw. When I went into the coop to freshen up the Ladies water a couple of days after putting the bales in their run, one of the Ladies had her head…
