**Warning: some of the pictures may be graphic and unsuitable for some viewers, as it shows butchering a chicken from start to finish. Full video tutorial at the end as well** Whether it’s home grown meat chickens, or that noisy rooster, a good homesteading skill to have is how to butcher your own chicken. We …
Should I be keeping the lights on in my chicken coop? This is a question that many chicken keepers find themselves asking each year as fall rolls around. To keep our chickens laying all winter long, we do something that many other homesteaders don’t. I’m talking about keeping lights on in a chicken coop over …
Happy chickens make great eggs! Here’s a recipe to make your own feed for smaller flocks, or supplemental scratch for larger flocks. When you have laying chickens, they will need to be fed. The best feed for chickens, of course, is their natural diet of bugs, grass, and worms. Even free range chickens that get to run, …
Homemade Chicken Feed – Feed Your Chickens Cheaply Read More »
Here are our sweet silkie chickens… My daughter has these babies as “show chickens” for 4H. Aren’t they adorable? We had them separate from the other hens since they were show birds, and their coop was just an open box. It did the trick, but we wanted to make sure they were better protected. With …
Raising chickens for meat, either as broilers or roaster chickens is one way to be assured of the quality of chicken you are feeding your family. Let me show you some tips from what we learned on how to raise chickens for meat. Our family raises 150 meat birds each year, and we will can …
Are you curious about the benefits of keeping the compost bin in the chicken coop? Don’t worry – this post will tell you all that you need to know! We decided to move our compost bin from our garden to our chicken area recently… Here are some of the biggest advantages of keeping your compost …
Spring is on the way, and with it, new life on the homesteads. There are a lot of homesteaders that can and will hatch their own chicks, either by incubator or broody hen, and there are those of us without roosters that will be ordering more chicks. Either way you choose to add to your …
Chickens are a rather low maintenance animal, in my opinion. Caring for your chickens in the winter doesn’t require much effort, just a little foresight. Chickens need water in the winter. You will want to keep it from freezing as much as possible. Amazon, sells these really cool heated waterers that work great. Otherwise, you …
A chicken tractor is a mobile coop that you can move around easily in your yard. It is called a “tractor” because the scratching and pecking motions of the birds can loosen the top inch of soil and help remove weeds. For some of you newer to homesteading, it’s hard to imagine how one might …
Growing fodder is a cheap way to feed your chickens, ducks, and rabbits throughout the year. It’s a simple concept, really. Basically, it’s allowing grains to sprout and grow into their respective grasses for feed supplementation for poultry. The animals then get greens with chlorophyll, as well as the proteins from the grains and the …
How to Grow Fodder to Feed Chickens, Ducks and Rabbits Read More »
