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 […]

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 […]

I’ve raised Silkies on and off throughout my chicken-keeping career. In that time I’ve ended up with a lot of roosters. Silkies, because they’re more of a pet chicken than a layer, are often sold in a straight run, meaning there is a 50/50 chance of getting a pullet or a cockerel. The reason I […]

Over the years, I’ve raised Silkies on and off. Every once in a while, one of the feed stores will get in a batch and I just can’t say no. I think they’re absolutely adorable! As we expand our chicken coop, I’d like to designate a wing just to the Silkie breed. Another breed I’d […]

When I first saw this chicken breed it was on Facebook and I thought…”Oh boy…someone’s getting creative with Photoshop.” In other words, I thought it was fake. The photo of an all-black chicken that claimed even the meat and bones were black seemed a bit far-fetched. But since that first online encounter, I’ve had the […]

I’ve been incubating my own eggs for about 10 years now. My advice to anyone starting out is to get the most foolproof incubator you can afford. I tend to be a minimalist at heart when it comes to projects. If there’s a simple tool that can do double duty, or if a task takes […]

A few weeks ago I started the evening chores like every other night. I grabbed the wire egg basket from the front porch and headed to the chicken coop. I collected eggs from our Buff Orpington pen, our Leghorn pen, and our Araucana and Olive Egger pen. When I went into the French Black Copper […]

Rolling through the chicken feed aisle at our local farm-supply store can feel a little overwhelming. The “chicken diet” options have come a long way since I first brought home 6 broiler chickens when I was 14 and a bag of cracked corn. Our local feed store not only carries several brands of chicken feed […]

I originally bought this small manufactured cool to be our Silkie pen. But after seeing how handy it is with our teenage chickens I may decide to buy another one for next year’s teens. Grow-out Pens A holding place for chickens after they’ve left the brooder but before they’re old enough to enter the adult […]

Over the years, in my experience keeping chickens, we’ve done both free-ranging and keeping them in a confined coop. My preferred method is to let them free-range, but right now I have our flock separated in pens by breed for breeding purposes. What Is Free-Ranging? Free-ranging can have a lot of definitions. Some commercial egg […]