My Pet Chicken Blog

I love squash. This year I’m growing the small pattypan variety, because they begin producing so much earlier! I love the little flying saucer shapes and diminutive size; they are just the right size for a single (generous) serving. The skin is very tender, and the flesh seems slightly sweeter and more buttery than zucchini or yellow […]

Part 3: Raising worms This is the third installment of my blog about raising worms as feed for your chickens. Part one can be viewed here and part two here. In this installment I’ll address harvesting the worms and feeding them to your chickens. Harvesting worms and castings There are several ways to harvest your worms. […]

Chickens aren’t the only birds we care for around here. We seem to have a rotating cast of winged stars that stay at our cottage a while before returning to the wild. Or, in most cases, our cottage *IS* the wild, and we’re just friendly neighbors who mind our business. Some birds stay for just […]

Our personal flock recently had its very first illness, and I am 100% to blame. In seven years, we’ve had to worm our flock ONCE. That’s the single solitary health problem we’ve ever had. Then, I had to go and get dumb. Although I’m smacking my forehead and slightly embarrassed about my lapse in judgment, […]

Chicken watching… There is something magical about it. Like watching the ocean or the ever changing colors at sunset on canyon walls or clouds as they roll across the vast skies of prairie states. Perhaps it’s the movement in all of it that enthralls us. We are linked to nature’s rhythm at our deepest levels […]

It’s just about time for wild blackberries to ripen in my area; I can hardly wait!  The chickens and I like eating seasonally , and the girls enjoy the blackberries just as much as I do. We have all sorts of fruits at our farm–blackberries, black raspberries, peaches, apples, plums, persimmons, cherries and pears, just […]

For years we enjoyed the native wildlife that was attracted to the pond on our property.  One year a gorgeous Great Blue Heron male began frequenting the property.  He would show up early in the morning or late in the evening to fish.  The bird was used to humans, it appeared, because we could sit […]

For people new to chicken keeping, deciding how they will manage their flock—free range or confined— can be pretty daunting. Part of the problem is that there isn’t really one BEST way to keep a flock. A lot will depend on your own situation. For instance, my chickens free range in the true sense. That […]