Category: Coop

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...

Umwelt is a concept developed in 1905 by German biologist Jakob von Uexküll. In German Um means around and Welt means the world. Your umwelt is everything you are able to perceive in the world around you. What we humans...

Chickens don’t have a nose to wriggle up, like a human who smells something odd or interesting. Neither to they noticeably sniff at things, like a dog does. Nevertheless, chickens have a keen sense of smell. And it’s likely every...

Controlling incubation humidity for a successful hatch ensures that moisture evaporates from poultry eggs at just the right rate. Humidity is a measure of the amount of moisture in the air. At a given temperature, the drier the air, the...

Eggs laid on the coop floor, appropriately called “floor eggs,” easily get dirty or cracked. They are unsanitary to eat and unsuitable for hatching. Plus a cracked egg is likely to get broken, making a mess. Hens will sample the...

Taste buds determine what chickens can and can’t taste, which in turn determines what a chicken prefers to eat. Taste buds therefore have an important impact on a chicken’s health and productivity. Until 1904, researchers believed birds didn’t have any...

The cecum is a blind pouch that branches off the juncture of the small and large intestine. Humans have only one, but chickens have two. A chicken’s cecal droppings differ from regular intestinal droppings. The word cecum comes from the...