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A yellow rat snake that's recently had a good meal! In this article, we’ll cover what species of snakes are most likely to break into your coop and the damage they can do, and we’ll walk you through every step of how to keep snakes out of your chicken coop—the right way. If you keep chickens and have ever had a snake make its way into your coop, you likely know what kind of havoc they can wreak on your flock. It’s important to keep snakes out of your henhouse. Still, you should do this following specific procedure—certain traps and poisons can be inhumane, and killing snakes is detrimental ..read more

Equipment Focus The ChickenGuard is one of the latest automatic chicken door opener/closers. I test the Chicken Guard Premium model on my chicken coop door at my Herefordshire Smallholding in this Equipment Focus.  I have owned several automatic chicken door openers/closers. I started with my first one, a VSB Chicken Door Opener, around 2005 and ended up buying more auto doors in the following years as our flock and the number of chicken houses expanded! Of course, reliability is paramount when you’re counting on an auto chicken door to lock up your coop. Failure of the d ..read more

Raising ducklings at home is relatively straightforward. They are more tolerant to disease and with the right equipment, are easier to brood than chicks; however, if we try brooding ducks in the same way, then with their love of water, they can soon make a mess! In this guide, you will learn all you need to know about preparing a duckling brooder and raising baby ducks. Ducklings can tolerate less than perfect brooding conditions, although this shouldn’t be an excuse to raise them in sub-standard conditions. If you have been used to raising chicks, be prepared to make a few changes to you ..read more

Over the years I had many people come up to me asking whether I was ‘the chicken man’… After explaining that I did keep chickens, they would go on to say that they had been thinking about getting a few hens and wanted some pointers… I produced a few typed sheets for them and this was how this beginner’s guide to keeping chickens got started! To Begin At The Beginning! Not wishing to put you off in any way but remember if you live in the UK you have a legal obligation under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 which states that … …you commit an offence if you don’t take steps as are reasonable in all t ..read more

If you’ve got a surplus of hatching eggs from your flock, then you might fancy generating a little income for the ‘feed fund’. Here are some best-practice guidelines on how to sell hatching eggs and some ideas on the best places to advertise and sell them There are no standards for selling hatching eggs. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people selling sub-standard eggs online, particularly on auction websites. These eggs are not of sufficient quality for hatching, are sometimes not even fertile, or are poorly packed and are no longer viable, even broken after the handling they get travel ..read more

Chicks hatched in an incubator have no Mother Hen to keep them warm. Without care and warmth, they won’t survive, so you need to have a brooder ready before they start to hatch. If you’ve ordered some day-old chicks, they too will need a brooder waiting for them. Even if you use a broody hen for hatching, it’s a good idea to be aware of what is required for artificial brooding in case of emergencies. In this article, I explain how to set up a brooder for raising chicks at home. What is a brooder? A brooder is quite simply a contained area that provides a warm and safe environment for rai ..read more

Success using an incubator isn’t guaranteed, especially with some of the cheaper models available. Getting good results at hatch time won’t just depend on your incubator’s performance; the way you set it up and check your measurements are important too. This article aims to help you set up your incubator to get the best possible results. Egg incubators come in many shapes and sizes. The controls can vary between different models, so I suggest you read the manufacturer’s instructions to get familiar with your particular model’s operation before you start. However automated your incubator ..read more

Using a broody hen to incubate eggs and hatch chicks, the way Mother Nature intended, has many benefits since she will usually hatch and rear the chicks without needing much assistance. In this article, I will look at what to do with a broody hen during the first few days of broodiness, getting a broody coop set up, answering how many eggs she can cover, and giving some tips for hatching eggs under a broody hen. If your hen already has chicks, then you might want to skip to the next article from our Broody Hen Advice: Broody Hen Care which deals with caring for her and her chicks after they ..read more

Domesticated chickens, especially modern hybrids, are fantastic egg layers; however, this performance increases nutritional demands, so how we feed our chickens has never been so important. To keep our chickens healthy and productive, they will need to receive the correct balance of nutrients, vitamins and minerals in their diet. They also limit their intake according to their energy requirements, so when we are feeding chickens, they must fill up on the right things first. Eggs are mostly protein, so hens must have enough of this in their diet to be able to produce all the eggs we ask ..read more