Search Results for: label/chicken

174 results

Hens Busy Dust Bathing

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Thoughtstylings
12 Comments
It’s difficult to capture the cuteness of this chicken behavior with a still camera–we really should try to make a  video.  Anyway, this is called “dusting” or “dust bathing.” The ladies have dug a hole in our yard and are gleefully rolling around in it, flicking loose dirt under their wings and driving it between their feathers. This is an innate behavior and an important part of chicken hygiene. Dusting s...

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Deep Bedding for Chickens

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Composting
42 Comments
We’ve got about 5-6″ of loose stuff on the floor of our chicken run. Underneath that, it’s black gold. Around this time of year, folks are getting chickens. Some for the first time. So I figured it was time to talk about deep bedding again. I know we’ve written about it before, in our book, or on this blog, but this advice bears repeating: Nature abhors bare ground.  Line your chicken coop and run with a thick l...

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The Sacred Chickens of Ancient Rome

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
6 Comments
I stumbled on an odd historical anecdote last week: the use, by the ancient Romans, of sacred chickens as a form of divination. From the Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert: Sacred chickens were chickens raised by priests in Roman times, and which were used for making auguries. Nothing significant was undertaken in the Senate or in the armies, without omens being drawn from the sacred chickens. The most common method of drawing...

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Google Sketchup as an Urban Homesteading Tool

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Design
21 Comments
I just completed a new chicken run, greatly assisted by an amazing and free 3d design program: Trimble SketchUp (formerly Google SketchUp). While it takes some time to learn (I’m still learning!), this program helped me visualize the chicken run as well as estimate the amount of materials I’d need to buy. Here’s how I used it to create the run: Previous runs either did not work (chickens squeezed out and flew over) or were hid...

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Are Pallets Safe to Reuse?

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Design, Thoughtstylings
9 Comments
Now you know. Pallet parts have names. As a fan and proponent of reusing pallets in building projects, such as chicken coops and compost containers, I’m often asked if I think they are safe to use given that shippers and manufacturers fumigate them with pesticides. In the United States quarantine regulations require that pallets be treated with methyl bromide, a pesticide being phased out due to its adverse effects on the ozone la...

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New Health Food Trends at the Natural Products Food Expo West

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Thoughtstylings
17 Comments
...lerance is a problem for many people. One out of 131 people have Celiac diseases and a great many more probably have some sort of wheat allergy. However, someone tell me why we have to label products like tomato sauce and raw chicken as being “gluten free?” Most new gluten free products, everything from pasta to crackers to power bars, use quinoa. The Natural Products Expo’s own trade publication noted that the exponential growt...

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Permaculturalist Paul Wheaton in Los Angeles

Mr. Homegrown
Events
3 Comments
...ly recognized Permaculturalist Paul Wheaton.  To encourage everyone to come and learn, this event is ALMOST FREE!!!!  Sign up a big group and pay nearly nothing to attend. Paul Wheaton of permies.com 10:30am No Coop, No Run Chicken Raising Why spend the money to build a chicken coop and run, when you can have healthier, happier chickens without them?  Paul explains his super simple backyard chicken raising techniques. [Editor's note: I know th...

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Poultry Houses of the Ultra Wealthy: Part 2

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Design, Thoughtstylings
15 Comments
Are $100,000 chicken coops a sign of an empire on the verge of a decadent downward spiral? If so it’s time to get that bug-out location ready because Neiman Marcus publicity flacks just announced a $100,000 “Heritage Hen Mini-Farm.” From the description on their website: Dawn breaks. The hens descend from their bespoke Versailles-inspired Le Petit Trianon house to their playground below for a morning wing stretch. Slipping on...

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Coffee Chaff Chickens

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Composting
14 Comments
A hen checks out her fluffy new digs: coffee chaff bedding Image shamelessly stolen from Lyanda Haupt’s Tangled Nest blog Mrs. Homegrown here: Deep litter in the chicken coop is good for chicken health, general aesthetics and good neighbor relations. Chickens need to scratch, so giving them lots of stuff to scratch is kind. It also absorbs odor and protects stray eggs from breakage. Even better, their constant scratching combines their...

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Arduino Homesteading Projects

Mr. Homegrown
How-to
5 Comments
An Arduino-based chicken coop controller on Instructables. At the risk of putting high tech in our low tech, I just took an introductory Arduino class at Crash Space along with the folks at Zapf Architectural Renderings. An Arduino is a simple, low cost microcontroller thingy. It’s got a bunch of digital outputs, analog and digital inputs and a programmable microchip. You download a program onto the chip (either one you’ve written yo...

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