More Araucana Egg Colors

January 15, 2008

...Still got the flu, so another short post today. We got another beautiful Araucana egg this morning. For those who like to be precise about your Araucana egg colors, we present the chart above, painstakingly crafted by British poultry enthusiast Frank Decmar and available on ebay....

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Your Thoughts on Treadle Feeders?

Mr. Homegrown

July 3, 2015

Animals, Chickens

8 Comments

...seases such as virulent forms of salmonella. One of the suggestions at the poultry seminar I attended last week was using treadle feeders. Think of it as a Skinner box for chickens. Chickens walk up to the feeder, step on a treadle, and feed is dispensed. It beats having to wake up at five in the morning to put out food in a conventional feeder. You have to teach your chickens how to use a treadle feeder. One of the veterinarians suggested putting...

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A tip for bored chickens . . .

Mr. Homegrown

June 30, 2015

Animals, Chickens

11 Comments

Yet more ideas from the poultry seminar I attended last week. Behavioral specialist Richard Blatchford of UC Cooperative Extension had a great idea for entertaining hens like ours that are confined to a run: give them a bale of straw and don’t even undo the strings. I used to cut the strings and toss them the bale in sections. Keeping it intact keeps them occupied for a much longer time. They’ve been obsessed with the bale for days now and are sl...

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Do Hens Make Noise?

Mr. Homegrown

January 7, 2008

Animals, Chickens

13 Comments

...out an egg, or some wonder of selective breeding, a way to announce to the poultry farmer, “Hey, time to collect an egg!” In fact, research presented by University of Sheffield animal scientists Tommaso Pizzari and Tim R. Birkhead, in an article entitled “For whom does the hen cackle? The function of postoviposition cackling,” posit that cacking is a way for hens to get the message out to nearby roosters that they ain’t in the mood. As Pizzari and...

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2008 . . . a year of luxury

Mr. Homegrown

January 1, 2008

Animals, Chickens

3 Comments

...ide to preventing and treating chicken diseases and problems. We’re new to poultry and, in just an hour of reading, have learned a lot from this book. It’s a must have for anyone thinking about getting chickens. Thanks to info in the book and our microscope, we’re looking forward to a year of DIY chicken fecal examinations and turning those parasite egg counts into a drinking game. We’ll inaugurate a new year of posts with an entertaining excerpt...

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