My Pet Chicken Blog

Recently we’ve been asked about a pretty sensational story: whether the deaths of some chickens purportedly caused by necrotic enteritis (NE) were due to using feed or chicken feed supplements mixed at home. We think there must be some confusion somewhere in the chain of information, a misunderstanding that should be cleared up. Let’s get this out of […]

I may have a flock of spoiled chickens. My brother-in-law has started his first job: he works at a bagel shop, and he knows the way to my hens’ hearts. His company normally donates any leftover bagels to halfway houses and homeless shelters, but on occasion, in support of spoiled chickens, he brings the inedibly stale […]

We all hate wasted bird feed, all those little bits that spill out of hanging feeders onto the ground, or the excess waste of crumbles or pellets lost from a ground feeder due to scratching hens. There is a cost to this wasted food, especially when you run out a week sooner than expected, and have to […]

In my neighborhood, olive trees are a pretty common landscaping tree. They’re in many parks and backyards, dropping olives, staining sidewalks and shoes, and making a general mess.  Olive picking sounds like fun, but you don’t know pain until you’ve sprained an ankle on a slimy olive pit, slid down the sidewalk, and been dumped unceremoniously […]

I have an embarrassingly large number of chickens who eat quite a bit of food. (Let’s not get into actual numbers of birds I may or may not have, because then the chicken math I keep in my head starts to break down.) So when my friend Judi showed me her DIY No-Waste feeder, I had to make a waste […]

It’s that time of year when your luscious green grass starts to dry up and become crunchy and brown.  It doesn’t look very appetizing, so why would your chickens want that? Wouldn’t you want a fresh green salad all year round? Well, HELLO FODDER!!! Sprouting fodder for your chickens is similar to growing sprouts for human consumption. […]

No, we’re not giving away fat chickens. We’re giving away samples of our own My Pet Chicken branded treats, in a Chunky Chicken Giveaway! If you win the Chunky Chicken Giveaway, you’ll receive

One of the weirdest things I see on the cartons  of commercial eggs in stores is this: “Vegetarian-fed.” Vegetarian chickens? Ha! What are they thinking? Chickens are omnivores, so even setting aside the conditions most commercial hens endure, it seems strange that any company would purposefully claim their hens are vegetarian chickens. You don’t have to be an […]

A Listen Lissa reader writes in with a question about her hens’ funny-looking eggs: I have a question about some funny-looking eggs. My chickens are a year old now, and have been laying for about seven months. Recently, I’ve noticed that two have had extra shell build-up on the outside of their eggs, sort of […]

As a gardener I want my entire family to benefit from what we grow. That includes the chickens and ducks. Fresh foods are important to the health of our chickens; healthier chickens means healthier eggs. When choosing our seeds to plant for the year, we keep the chickens and their needs in mind. You may […]