Life on the Farm
Numerous folk methods floating around the internet claim to accurately determine the sex of an egg before or during incubation. But do they work? Can you really sex an egg before it hatches? Technically the gender ratio of chicks at...
Chickens have been associated with people for so long that our language is peppered with idioms deriving from that association. Even city folks who have never seen a live chicken use such expressions, often without realizing what they actually mean....
Understanding whether or not vinegar in your chickens’ water promotes flock health requires first understanding pH. In case you missed, or forgot, this part of chemistry class, let’s start with a quick review. The pH Scale The acidity or alkalinity...
Chickens are just big birds. And bigger birds than chickens fly really well. So let’s find out why chickens don’t fly. Or at least why they don’t fly as well as, say, a hawk. Wing Loading The short answer is...
Dual-purpose chickens are the classic backyard breeds. Farmers, like my grandparents, kept them to produce both eggs and meat for sale, until the introduction of commercial hybrids developed solely as layers or solely as broilers. In commercial production both hens...
Marek’s disease is so common you can assume your chickens have it, even if they don’t show any signs. But while some chickens resist Marek’s disease, others succumb. The question is: Why? What is Marek’s Disease? Marek’s disease is the...
A matter of much debate among chicken keepers is whether or not to use electric lights in winter to encourage hens to keep laying. Let’s look at some facts and bust some myths about lighting your chicken coop in winter....
Barbed wire criss-crossed our Tennessee farm when we moved here four decades ago. Some of the wire was wrapped around or stapled to rickety fence posts. But most of it was nailed or stapled to trees — not a safe...
Every time I hear cackling referred to as a hen’s egg song, I get a little confused. The many studies I’ve read about chicken sounds always refer to pre-laying hen sounds as singing. None refer to a hen’s post-lay cackle...
What, exactly, causes a chicken to go broody is a subject that baffles even the best poultry scientists. One thing we know is that whether or not a hen decides to brood depends on three interconnecting factors: genetics, hormones, and...
