An All-Cement Chicken House

...g that has way too many subjects for its own good, I take great comfort in the eclecticism of Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Magazine. In the pages of the Craftsman you’ll find poems by Carl Sandburg, and critiques of Maxim Gorky next to practical tips on the construction of chicken coops. As to this particular coop, from a 1916 issue, I agree that, “Beauty certainly cannot be claimed.” And the production of concrete is an environmental nightmare so...

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Practical Backyard Chicken Biosecurity

...temperament of my hens and my desire to protect our garden from marauding chickens, I keep our hens in an enclosed run during the day. I rarely see any wild birds in the run, but there are some improvements I could make to keep wild birds out entirely. Obviously, if you free range your hens you can’t keep them away from wild birds, but it was suggested at the conference not to keep chickens near ponds or even small water features since wild ducks...

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Free Online Chicken Behavior Course

...reader James for this tip: Coursera is offering a 5 week online course on chicken behavior, taught by the staff of Scotland’s Rural College. For those of you who haven’t heard about Coursera, it’s an online platform offering free courses in a wide variety of subjects, taught by professors from genuine big name universities, via video. The classes may or may not also include homework and discussion groups, but these are optional, and required only...

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The Perfect Chicken Coop?

...to go in the coop to collect eggs. It has a roof over the run to keep your chickens dry. It’s the basic form I used for our coop with a few refinements–I ran hardware cloth under run to keep out burrowing predators. I also extended the run to keep the chickens from pecking at each other (the more room they have the better). To paraphrase Nassim Taleb for the second time in a week, if a given design has been around for at least a hundred years, the...

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Backyard Poultry with the Chicken Whisperer

...erything from bantams to the controversial National Animal Identification System. You can listen live on Sandy Springs Radio or download past shows here. Thanks to Christine Heinrichs, author of How To Raise Chickens and the Official Poultry Bookstore blog for tipping us off to the Chicken Whisperer. Heinrichs was a guest on the May 9th show. Now maybe it’s time for Rush to start talkin’ turkey....

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