My Pet Chicken Blog

This morning I could hear the yipping and howling of coyotes down in our holler. Even so, I’m not too worried; I have roosters to help keep a look out. But how can roosters hope to deal with coyotes? Let me explain! Coyotes are in my area year-round, but we tend to be aware of […]

Have your chickens ever encountered a skunk? The other morning I had a chicken skunk encounter–yikes! It happened quite early in the morning when I was out taking sunrise photos.  I especially love those rosy mornings in spring and fall, where the light casts everything as pink. Our silvery old barn is always a little […]

Chickens and dogs: they don’t naturally get along. A reader writes to “Listen Lissa,” asking how to handle the loss of her chickens to a neighbor’s dogs: My neighbors’ dog gets out of their house a lot. Twice he got into my enclosed chicken yard and has now killed half of my hens. How do […]

Do your chickens have enough sense to come in out of the rain? Probably not. Actually, that your flock would “come in out of the rain” is not necessarily sensible behavior… not for chickens. A rainy day can be a good day for a chicken to forage more widely than normal. On overcast days, the extra […]

I am possibly in the process of designing my third DIY chicken coop.  I guess it’s a little odd; after all, I could just buy one of the amazing coops that MPC sells—but that would be too easy for the likes of me! 😉  I’m just a DIY person at heart. It’s not even about […]

I got a call from a friend last week about chicken predators. “I was on my way to work,” he explained, “and I saw something—I wanted to let you know!” It seems what he’d seen was a black bear–a big one!–probably a mile or two from our house, and headed in our general direction.   […]

Several years ago I got it in my head I needed a pet duck or two. A normal person would discuss this with their significant other and plan how to tackle the new addition to the family. I, however, got sneaky. A friend gave me some fertile eggs and I set them under some broody […]

A couple of months ago, I dreamed my flock was destroyed. I bolted upright out of bed, fuming mad at those (!@*$) darn raccoons… and then, in a fog, realized it was just a dream. The coop in my dream was the wrong one–it was from a house we lived in years ago. The chickens […]

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 […]

We’ve never heard any meaningful reasons against keeping a small flock of pet backyard chickens. Objections to urban and suburban chicken keeping usually spring from basic ignorance or a lack of education about chickens, and occasionally just a plain lack of common sense. Below are the basic objections you will hear… and as you will […]