My Pet Chicken Blog

I will admit this up-front: I want my garden to be great.  Not just okay, but great.  But here’s the problem: I don’t want to work hard. Here’s how I trick my chickens into growing my garden. Yes, I’m a lazy gardener. Thankfully, chickens are NOT lazy. They love to forage, and that can help make […]

Gardening with chickens: You may have visions of living the good life, the agricultural life, and being more sustainable by producing your own garden veggies and chicken eggs in your backyard. But the trick is being properly prepared for the challenges. For instance, the pet chickens you love so much are not going to respect your garden […]

It’s February, and time to get the backyard gardening blood rousted and roiling full tile boogie! I must somehow confound my husband into delivering and distributing several loads of chicken poo infused pine shavings over our potato bed. 

I feel blessed to have a small chunk of this earth to call my own. I really do want to make the best of it. Yet, my efforts to create the attractive and productive outdoor space that I imagine have been woefully inadequate.  While I dream of harvesting homegrown crops to feed my family the way […]

How many of us have some unwanted  garden helpers? I may have a few chicken garden helpers here and there. Likely story, Nugget. No one is buying it. I could put in a higher fence, as even my fattest hens can easily scale my low, 4-foot fence when the motivation is free reign of the garden… […]

It’s seed catalog time! If you garden, you’re probably already being tempted by all the things you can order… but you have to do extra thinking when deciding what plants to grow when you keep pet chickens. There are some good steps to take to combine chickens and gardening–you definitely want to think ahead. Chickens want to […]

I loved seeing all the coop decorations from my colleagues for the Coop Giveaway with Fresh Eggs Daily. I didn’t submit a coop photo, though. I confess that while I go a little mad with inside winter decorations, I don’t decorate outside for winter. For other seasons, I do! For fall, I like mums, and […]

On Facebook yesterday, we shared a story from Michigan. Michigan residents have just lost their Right to Farm protections. There was a variety of response to this distressing news.With the responses were a few misconceptions. For instance, some were panicked, seemingly under the mistaken impression that backyard chickens have been expressly outlawed. That’s not the […]

Chickens and gardening: in some ways, these two hobbies are incredibly compatible. After all, chickens eat plant pests. Their droppings and litter can be converted into some truly fantastic compost. And there’s a certain symmetry in making choices that allow you to produce eggs, fruits and vegetables on your own little family farm. Local food […]

Our blog at My Pet Chicken has made many posts and references about the social misconceptions associated with keeping a backyard flock. Such as Lissa’s post: Do chickens make you look poor? Yet, the humble chicken always finds its way back into our backyards and hearts.  When I read this essay by E.B. White—“The Hen: […]