Meet My Chickens: the continuing story of Chickenzilla

...y lazy broiler hen– a corporate agribusiness chicken. Eventually the other chickens showed her how good bugs and greens are and she started scratching around in the dirt and eating worms. Now she eats all her greens like a good girl. She has more kale and less corn in her diet these days. And she is very active. Despite her heft she can outrun all the other chickens when I throw a choice grub or beetle into their enclosure. She can even jump/fly t...

Read…

The Chicken and the Egg

...ir eggs, which we now believe are substandard.” Now we haven’t counted our chickens before they’ve hatched. Pasture raising chickens, even in a small backyard entails more risk (mainly from predators such as hawks and loose dogs) than confining them to a cage. It’s definitely easier and more economical for commercial producers to confine chickens. But consider the consequences of the economic and quality race to the bottom of factory farming’s eco...

Read…

013 Keeping Chickens with Terry Golson of Hencam.com

...Terry mentions: Her blog post on why she does not go to a Vet to treat her chickens. Keeping antibiotics on hand as well as other things you should have in your chicken first aid kit. Terry’s “spa treatment” she uses to deal with egg binding. Doing a chicken necropsy. Why Terry doesn’t keep roosters. Where to source chicks and pullets. When and how to euthanize a sick chicken. I mention free necropsies provided by the University of California Exte...

Read…

Steal this Book!

...s illustrations, project ideas, resources, and first person anecdotes from urban homesteaders across the country. Authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen happily farm in their Echo Park bungalow and run the urban homestead blog: www.homegrownevolution.org. By the way, that’s not us on the cover–those be models. Since we’ve just about given up on privacy here’s a photo of us on the right (by Caroline Clerc). And, for the record, we don’t have a modern...

Read…

SIPS and Kraut at Project Butterfly

...our community and our planet. Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne, authors of The Urban Homestead, have become increasingly interested in the concept of urban sustainability since moving to Los Angeles in 1998. In that time, they’ve slowly converted their 1920 hilltop bungalow into a mini-farm, and along the way have explored the traditional home arts of baking, pickling, bicycling and brewing, chronicling all their activities on their blog Homegrown Evo...

Read…