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Poultry Keepers Best Friend
Have you heard of Diatomaceous Earth? Listen closely, for it is the best thing since peanut butter and for chicken keepers it is your best friend. Take heart if you’re interested in keeping medications...
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650% increase in fertility?!
Amazing Chunky Chicken Caviar Whoa. This is so unreal, I just had to tell you right away. We’ve been testing out Chunky Chicken Caviar as a feed supplement for one of our rare breed flocks that was...
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Cross beak / Scissor Beak
Close-up of a Scissor Beak (the top and bottom don’t line up) Crossed Beak / Scissor Beak, can be severe, but many times, this beak malformation is not hazardous to your chicken’s health. This...
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Free Range? Four Ways to Manage your Small Flock
For people new to chicken keeping, deciding how they will manage their flock—free range or confined— can be pretty daunting. Part of the problem is that there isn’t really one BEST way to keep a flock....
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Chicken poop nincompoop
Our personal flock recently had its very first illness, and I am 100% to blame. In seven years, we’ve had to worm our flock ONCE. That’s the single solitary health problem we’ve ever had. Then, I had...
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Free ranging didn’t work for me…
Fox family living in a drain. Photo by Heather S. of Colorado. When I go out in the morning to bring treats to my girls and collect our little egg gifts for the day, I’m greeted at the run door by hens...
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The Story of Hot Shot
Hot Shot Oh, me, did I ever bite the bullet. One of my lovely chickens, a Campine/Black Marans cross named Hot Shot, developed a foot infection, commonly called bumblefoot. Off we go to the vet and she...
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The 6 Important Habits of Successful Small Flock Owners
Successful small flock owners may have vastly different management styles. Some may hatch their own birds, while others may order from a hatchery or buy from a breeder. Some small flock owners will...
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Cold weather chickens – 8 things NOT to do to in winter
How to prepare your chickens for winter isn’t especially intuitive, and many people may take steps that can actually make things more difficult for their flock rather than helping them to become cold...
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Pumpkins for chickens – Pumpkins everywhere!
Hey Girls! It’s PUMPKIN and SEEDS!!! Now is the time to get pumpkins for chickens. Scoop up all the left over, cheap pumpkins you can find from the grocery stores and farmers markets. They should be...
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My blind hen Hildy – Learning to find food
How can you teach a blind hen to forage if she can’t see what’s on the ground? That was the problem that presented itself to us when Hildy learned to go outside. Miss Hildy, you can’t see it, but...
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Fresh greens mean healthier eggs
I love my flock! Watching their funny antics, getting mobbed when I show up with treats, and being adored by a few lap chickens is rewarding, but being able to supply my family with delicious, healthy...
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Grocery store egg labels: what they REALLY mean
Here’s an article I recently wrote about grocery store egg labels for dLife, a wonderful online resource for folks with diabetes. Many chicken-keepers are already aware of the difference “cage-free”...
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The scoop on chicken poop
One of the weird things about owning chickens is that you have to pay a lot of attention to chicken poop. It’s strange, but it’s an important indicator of health or illness, just as it is in humans....
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Farewell, Ashlee
Ashlee, we woke up this morning to find you had left us. Always the first to come running when you saw us in the yard, always forgiving as our kids endlessly carried you around the yard like you were a...
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Backyard Pet Chickens: 5 Tips for Beating the Heat
You can tell your backyard pet chickens are too hot when they hold their wings away from their bodies to help release heat; they may also pant with their beaks open to try to cool themselves off. But...
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Listen Lissa: My hen lays funny-looking eggs!
A Listen Lissa reader writes in with a question about her hens’ funny-looking eggs: I have a question about some funny-looking eggs. My chickens are a year old now, and have been laying for about seven...
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Chickens coming home to roost
A reader of our chicken advice column has a question about her chickens coming home to roost: Listen Lissa, We have a flock of three so far (more in the brooder) who get along great, and have been in...
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Emergency chicken bath. Wait, what?
Backyard pet chickens don’t normally need to be bathed. There are exceptions; the most common being in preparation for showing your chickens at a poultry exhibition. But there are other occasions where...
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Lissa’s Favaucanas – Good news and bad
We have some good and bad news about our Salmon and Blue Salmon Favaucanas. Juvenile Favaucanas are so pretty together! These are mostly blue salmon Favaucanas. We’ve had nearly 400 people (at the time...
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