My Pet Chicken Blog

Last week I wrote about the fact that cold hardiness and winter laying aren’t the same thing, and there were some suggestions to add light to the coop to increase winter laying. It’s true that winter production increases if you add light to the coop (although good winter laying is still breed related)… but adding light something [...]

We all had fun reading all the responses to the You Might Be Addicted To Chickens game we posted on Facebook! I collected  some of our favorites and came up with a great list: Top 50 reasons you might be addicted to chickens You might be addicted to chickens if…   you plan your dinner menus [...]

Dealing with egg eating hens is a very frustrating problem—one I’m trying to deal with right now. I prefer our hens leave their eggs for us to eat, so I have some work ahead of me! Let me start off telling you about our problem chicken, Isa.  She is an ISA Brown chicken (a sex-linked [...]

In an earlier post I mentioned the damage done by hurricane Irene to our enclosed chicken run. Our run hadn’t been predator-proof for almost a year. Things have been very busy at My Pet Chicken and it took a scheduled one-week family vacation this summer to finally pull me from behind the keyboard and put on my [...]

In May, I posted a teaser about some new breeds we were starting, and asked you all which breeds YOU wanted most to see us carry. I’m so happy to announce that some of those breeds are now available! As hatching eggs, we have Cream Legbars, and as baby chicks we now offer Blue Ameraucanas [...]

We as a family are generally pretty frugal. We like making the most of what we get into the house. This goes double for our foods. We like to use fresh vegetables as often as we can. In an effort to follow my Mom’s wise mantra “waste not, want not”, we give the scraps from [...]

Oh, me, did I ever bite the bullet. One of my lovely chickens, a Campine/Black Marans cross named Hot Shot, developed a foot infection, commonly called bumblefoot. Off we go to the vet and she had surgery to open up the infected foot and came home to live in the house and get her daily [...]

It was my fault, I admit it. I forgot. It was the first time, and hopefully the last! I forgot to shut the coop that night. Now, there are myriad reasons to make sure to shut your coop up at night—especially if you free range like we do—and most of them have names like weasel [...]

There was quite a response to Traci’s post on White Leghorns. This is a related story, which I meant to post weeks ago… (Yikes! Time flies.) To say that this past New England fall and winter were atypical would be an understatement. Hurricane Irene blew through in late August and one month later we were [...]

Have you heard of Diatomaceous Earth? Listen closely, for it is the best thing since peanut butter and for chicken keepers it is your best friend. Take heart if you’re interested in keeping medications to a minimum, because it is non-toxic and totally natural. Plus, it’s accepted in organic feed regimens. What is it? Is [...]