To thrive and do well, chickens need access to an outdoor area where they can forage, dust bathe, exercise and indulge their natural behaviours. The chicken run fulfils those requirements, whether it’s a one-acre field, a section of orchard, half a back garden or a couple of square metres of wood and mesh attached to a [...]
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Keeping chickens: housing
16 December, 2011
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There are so many different approaches to housing chickens that it is difficult to decide which style to go with, which materials to go with and whether to build or buy, especially for people looking for the ‘right’ house. There are small, lightweight houses for the urban chicken keeper, made of plastic, lightweight plywood or [...]
Read more Keeping chickens: the site
9 December, 2011
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One of the advantages of keeping chickens is that they are small enough to make it straightforward to replicate the conditions in which their ancestors originally evolved. The Red Jungle Fowl, from which the chicken descends, tends to be found in mixed forests and forest-grassland margins. These are habitats where they have access to taller [...]
Read more Keeping chickens: basics
8 December, 2011
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Small-scale chicken keeping goes through regular bouts of increased popularity, depending on media coverage of issues that catch the public eye: ‘living the good life’, animal welfare, the cost of food, ‘downsizing’, the ‘cuteness’ factor and more. We’ve seen this several times in the past eight years and are experiencing a fresh resurgence of interest [...]
Read more Curious death of a chicken
8 November, 2011
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One of our Scots Grey pullets died last night. I counted all the chickens out when I opened the pophole to the big hen house this morning. The flock was one short. After walking around to the main door, I opened it and looked in.
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