Laws tend to be about following rules, something that many homesteaders aren’t necessarily keen on embracing. Matt Wilkinson shares his take on existing small-scale poultry keeping and chicken processing laws and how you can make them work for you. Skeptic and Solution Finder I’ve never enjoyed being told what to do, especially if I could […]

Joel Salatin (aka Chicken Man), Author of Pastured Poultry Profits, writes about the pros and cons of U.S. government poultry processing regulations. Legislation Protecting Small-Scale Poultry Producers One of the early poultry processing laws in the U.S. was passed by Congress in 1957. The Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA) requires that any poultry intended to […]

Tricks and tips for hatching chicks with incubators and moving them to brooders. You can read about incubators at Taking the Guesswork Out of Incubators -Advertisement- – Hatching Begins in the Egg The hatching process is one of the niftiest little miracles in the animal world. During the last days of incubation, the chick grows […]

Summer was warm, the days were long, and you got used to having lots of eggs. Then your hens stopped laying. Michele Cook looks at the many different reasons your hens may (temporarily) have stopped laying eggs. Why have my chickens stopped laying eggs? Ugh! This is a common complaint from chicken keepers all over […]

Traci DeLore helps you navigate selective breeding in your urban flocks. With a little effort, you can breed preferred traits into your flock. If you’ve kept a number of chickens for any time, you’re bound to have said, “I wish that chicken had a smaller comb” or “I wish I had more chickens that laid blue […]

Do’s and Don’t for buying chicks from feed stores, from blogger Kaylee Vaughn. Check out Part 1 Buying from Local Breeders and Part 2 Buying from Professional Hatcheries as well.    You’ve decided to purchase your first chicks! Or, maybe, you are adding some new chicks to your existing flock! Either way, it’s an exciting […]

Do’s and Don’t for buying chicks from professional hatcheries from blogger Kaylee Vaughn. Check out Part 1 Buying from Local Breeders and Part 3 Buying from Feed Stores as well.    You’ve decided to purchase your first chicks! Or, maybe, you are adding some new chicks to your existing flock! Either way, it’s an exciting […]

Part of our Breed Profiles series, Sussex chickens are dual purposes birds with several distinctive plumage patterns. History Possible, like the Dorking, originally introduced to the British Isles by the Romans Contemporary  breed Originated in south east  England area of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.  Probably most popular table bird in 19th c and through mid-20thc. […]

Learn about biodigesters and how they can help you process chicken poop, from permaculture writer Jonathon Engels. Where there are chickens, or any animal for that matter, poop is sure to follow. While this is often erroneously referred to as waste, the fact is that we can do lots of very useful things with manure. […]

Veteran chicken keeper Carrie Miller has some recommendations for 2020 chicken items, based on her experiences. Every year new and improved chicken items come out on the market to help make chicken keeping easier. While some items get better and better each year other items were great from the start and need little to no […]