My Pet Chicken Blog

Chickens have been a lifelong obsession for me. Having chickens led to breeding chickens, breeding led to a desire to improve the chickens I had, and that desire eventually led me to showing. Poultry exhibiting, commonly known as “showing”, seems like another planet to many. In some regards it is; it has its own language, […]

I want to be patient, I really do.  It’s hard, though. I mean, you remember that feeling you’d get as a kid when your birthday approached? That almost unbearable anticipation? That’s what I have. Well, stop whining, Lissa. Act like an adult. You cannot open your presents early.

  I am fond of all my chickens, but Pecker and Little Blue have a special place in my heart because they enjoy hopping up into my lap to sit and be loved on. Little Blue is such a sweetheart.  She’s one of my newest chickens, a 9 month old blue Easter Egger Bantam, and loves […]

I love hatching chicks at home. I LOVE seeing their first blinky-eyed look at the world outside their little egg. I love that when they’ve first hatched, I can put my hand inside the brooder, and they all rush to snuggle beneath it like I’m their mother hen. I love hatching beneath a real mother […]

Part 2: Raising worms to feed your chickens This is the second installment of my post on raising worms to feed your chickens! Part 1 can be viewed here. When I build my beds, I start by laying in my bedding. Strips of newspaper, manure or peat moss makes very good bedding. Then I moisten […]

I don’t have the funky, tailless, tufted Araucanas, but I have to admit, they sure do look cool! I do have both real Ameraucanas, and Easter Eggers… and I love them both. I love real Ameraucanas, I admit. I’m probably biased, since some of my favorite birds were Ameraucanas. They don’t lay as well as my Easter […]

As a gardener I take advantage of my chickens’ droppings whenever I can.  First, I get all dressed in my chicken cleaning uniform, gloves and boots,  then trudge out to the coops with shovel in hand. When I clean the coops I make sure nothing is wasted and it all gets moved right to my […]

It was time for my hens’ first official chicken photography session.  My good friend, Laurel, who does not own chickens, stopped by to photograph my lovely flock of adult hens and my newest arrival of baby chicks. My hens were very happy to see her that morning, not because they were getting their pictures taken by […]

Recently, Lissa posted on the Secret Dangers of Keeping Chickens. I’m here to warn you of another. Now that I keep chickens, every single morning presents me with an agonizing decision. My blood pressure rises, my chest tightens, and my breathing becomes more shallow as I contemplate this: which eggs am I willing to crack […]

When I first started keeping chickens—or as my daughter likes to say, “way back in the olden days”—I was easily freaked out by their behaviors. Like, all the time. Seriously. For a while it seemed to happen at least once a week. Now, it’s not that I didn’t inform myself beforehand about what to expect; […]