You can participate in the our Survey of Chicken Breeds and Hybrids.

One of the first questions people ask when they’re thinking about raising chickens is, “What kind of chickens should I get?”

That question leads to more questions. Do you want to keep chickens primarily for eggs or for pest control? How much space do you have? What are the temperature extremes in your location? Do you want your chickens to hatch eggs and raise chicks? What color eggs do you prefer?

After you’ve answered those (and other) questions, you’ll want to match your needs and desires with the breed or breeds that meet your criteria. But what are the characteristics of each breed? You can research many breeds, but how do you know the information is reliable?

Although we understand that there are significant variations within breeds of chickens, each breed has a few characteristics that are common to almost all birds of that breed. And we think that some of the information about certain chicken breeds and hybrids might be outdated, or even wrong. So, we’ve developed a survey to determine the characteristics of breeds of chickens. Our goal is to publish an article summarizing the survey in the April/May 2010 issue of MOTHER EARTH NEWS magazine.

If you have experience raising chickens, we’d like you to take the Survey of Chicken Breeds and Hybrids. Depending on your experience, it may take 15 or 20 minutes to complete. You can start by clicking here.

Early one summer morning I was sipping coffee, looking out over the quiet garden. There, on top of the shed, was a Cooper's Hawk — a beautiful, long-tailed, orange-legged bird, not particularly common in the city, even nature-filled Seattle, where I live. I ran to get my binoculars, wishing my husband and daughter were awake to have a look. But then I stopped in my tracks. Cooper's Hawks are bird eaters, and that hawk was perched right above my innocent, six-week-old chickens! In a flash I morphed from “Urban Birder” to “Protector of the Flock.” I ran outside like Ma Ingalls, waving my arms, pink flannel pajamas dragging around my feet, and yelling "Bad hawk! Go away!" The bird threw me a cool glance before leaping into flight, and I scampered barefoot around the muddy coop yard, scooping up the girls to bring them into the kitchen for the day.

I have always been critical of farmers that bait “vermin” such as hawks, coyotes and cougars because of their perceived threat to livestock, and I still am. But since the Cooper’s Hawk incident my thinking has become more nuanced. What if I really was Ma Ingalls? What if I was raising chickens not just because I love to do it, but because I had to do it, because there was no other source of sustenance for my family? What if all this was true and I kept a shotgun over the door?
One of the motivations for modern homesteaders — urban or rural — is the deepening of our "connection to nature." The notion conjures a poetic warmth — we sow, we reap, we nurture our gardens with compost, we stand in rain, in sun, beneath clouds and moon. The seasons are made beautifully manifest from peas to pumpkin. But just as often, the brush with nature is of a much different sort.

This year, crows watched me plant my peas, then nimbly plucked the seeds up with their bills as soon as I left (evidently they could identify the exact place of each seed by the dark patch of freshly-turned earth above it).

Raccoons clawed several of the apples from my new little columnar trees. A mole lifted my young broccoli plants right out of the ground. Most horribly, one night several years ago I was feeling complacent and didn’t shut the chickens in the coop; a raccoon climbed the fence and left poor Beatrix, Iris and Opal nearly dead.
In his indispensable book, Living With Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest (which offers a great deal of insight no matter what your geographic region), Russell Link writes, "We love wild animals, or we hate them, depending on what they're doing." Our hearts lift at the robin's spring song, then in the summer they eat our strawberries.

Our modern homesteading efforts underscore the fact that our dwellings are, in large part, semi-permeable. In our everyday living, we cross into wild nature, and it crosses — distressingly sometimes — back. I truly believe that it is both a privilege and a joy to live alongside wild creatures in our urban homes. But to dwell thoughtfully alongside wildlife, we will have to tolerate some inconvenience, give up some control, allow some slight discomfort. We’ll have to call upon our own wild creativity. We’ll have to remember that when a raccoon gets a chicken, it’s our own dumb fault.

And so we put nets over the strawberries, shoo the crows, and lock the girls into their own little Chicken Guantanamo every night. We take our place in a richly more-than-human world with as much grace as we can muster, with occasional difficulty, and with an ever-deepening delight.

Pictured above: Crow-bill sized hole in the pea patch.  At least I knew right where to re-plant! Photo by Lyanda Haupt.

Lyanda Haupt is a Seattle-based author, naturalist, and backyard  homesteader/chicken keeper.  Her latest book is Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness and she blogs at The Tangled Nest.

Each winter at Nature’s Hatchery, our customer service staff gets calls from concerned poultry owners who are looking for tips and guidelines on how to successfully keep their poultry through the winter. Although there many questions and concerns, we offer the following advice to cover some of the most frequently asked questions, and help folks tide their birds over until spring production begins.

Winter, although it can be harsh at times, especially in certain parts of the country, should not be detrimental if your flock is prepared and properly monitored. Birds already prepare themselves by cutting back on production, molting (getting in new feathers) and increasing feed consumption. As long as you do your part, your poultry should be just fine.

The general guidelines and specific pointers below are primarily for first-time poultry owners. These pointers contain several little-known facts, recently confirmed by science, about feeding and supplementing your birds with necessary nutrients. While the main part of this information will be most relevant to backyard poultry owners who have small- to medium-sized flocks, the principles laid out here apply whether you have one bird or hundreds.

Starting a Flock

Different age groups of poultry have unique requirements and abilities to survive cold weather. Day-old chicks are the most fragile. One of the most important things to remember when starting a flock in the winter is that the information most hatcheries and books give is often confined to raising chicks in warmer weather. In addition to the guidelines suggested, precautions must be taken for power outages, extreme weather and unexpected circumstances that can arise during the winter. Something minor in warm months, such as a heat lamp failing, could quickly affect your whole flock in colder weather, making it necessary to start over.

We recommend starting with a minimum of two heat lamps for any number of birds. Red-tinted, 250-watt bulbs are best as they produce the most heat but reduce brightness, so they’re not as hard on the chicks’ eyes. A good rule of thumb is to use one heat bulb per thirty chicks, keeping in mind that a backup bulb must always be burning as well, to make up for the occasional failure of a bulb. You can wean the chicks off heat easily by elevating the heat lamps a few inches per week, reducing the temperature by 5 degrees Fahrenheit until the birds are comfortable with the temperature outside. Make the transition over a 10-week period, and the birds should be ready to range outdoors.

Another important thing to remember is to check on the birds as often as possible, with a recommended minimum of three times per day. If birds are cheeping loudly, or huddling in groups, they are most likely too cold. Chicks that remain in the same place or are lethargic usually need immediate care. Try feeding them warm water and placing them under the heat bulbs. Damp or wet patches of bedding should be replaced with new material daily. We have found straw to be the best bedding material. It retains and radiates heat from the bulbs, and can’t be eaten by the chicks.

One of the most important factors in winter brooding is the power supply. A covered brooder is ideal, as it holds the heat in longer than other types if the electricity goes out. But because power failures often occur at night, even a covered brooder couldn’t retain heat for more than a few minutes. One of the best products we have available to help this situation is a unit that plugs into a wall outlet and activates an alarm when the power is off for more than a few seconds. This doesn’t replace checking your brooder or incubator at night, but it’s helpful.

If chicks chill, they often get a condition called “pasting” during which their vents (anuses) becomes blocked with droppings. If caught early enough, you can prevent the chicks from dying by slowly and gently removing the blockage with the help of warm water. This condition can also suggest insufficient water consumption or supply.

Eliminating drafts is another key to success in winter brooding. The best method to prevent drafts is by using a brooder fence (cardboard) two feet or higher. To check for drafts, simply observe the general placement of chicks in the brooder. If they group on one side, you will need to eliminate the drafts coming from the opposite side. Chicks will grow faster and be healthier without drafts.

General Guidelines for Winter Brooding

• Before your shipment of chicks arrives, preheat your brooder for a day, and use only warm or room temperature water for the chicks’ first drink. Cold water can be a shock to their systems (as is the minor stress of shipping) and should be avoided.
• Add Karo syrup or sugar to the water to give the chicks an additional boost and to perk up any droopy chicks. The ratio should be one part sugar, three parts water for waterfowl, and one part sugar, two parts water for chicks.
• Do not raise chicks in outbuildings during the winter, especially for the first four weeks, unless they’ll be kept in a room heated above 70 degrees. Raising chicks outside greatly increases the odds of something going wrong. After their fourth week, they can be moved to a brooder in an outbuilding. They’re past their danger point and have begun their growing stage.
• Do not allow the birds out of their brooder until they’re fully feathered, with no down visible, or are eight to 10 weeks old. If they’re let out, they will need to put all of their energy into growing feathers, rather than growing in size.

Winter Tips for Older Poultry (12 Weeks and Older)

After your birds are 12 weeks old, you should have no further problems relocating them to their permanent coop. At this stage, they should be fully feathered and will look like mature birds, although they may be only half their final size and weight. You can check on these birds as often as you like, but after they have reached this hardy stage, more than two or three times per day shouldn’t be necessary.

You may want to give your birds warm water periodically. Chickens and smaller birds, such as quail, are particularly fond of warm water in cold weather. This is understandable, because it helps them keep warm without using up energy reserves in the process. Water supply is important to successfully raising poultry, especially in winter. If you have access to electricity in your coop, we recommend purchasing a heater or a heated waterer so your birds can enjoy an uninterrupted water supply (more on that later).

Another tip that we often give our customers is to feed scratch grains, especially corn, to their birds in this age group. This shouldn’t replace their regular feed, nor should scratch grains be used in excess, but they are an essential part of a good poultry owner’s feeding routine. We choose corn, because in the digestion process it produces more energy than other grains to keep the bird warm. It also converts into fats, which help insulate the bird against the cold. Chickens, and waterfowl especially, will produce better in the following year if they are slightly fattened the year before. Too much fattening can harm their productivity, but if you keep their weight at 5 to 8 percent more than their normal state in the winter, it can pay off in the number of eggs collected the following spring.

In autumn, check your coop to ensure that it is free of drafts. Fill any cracks and reduce ventilation be to hold heat. Because predators are more likely to view your flock as an easy food source during the winter, make sure that your coop has raccoon-proof latches and all holes are sealed. Weasels and rodents can fit through amazingly small openings!

It’s a good idea to change the bedding in your coop regularly, to prevent accumulation of damp or wet material, which can not only freeze and cause frostbite, but it is unhealthy for the poultry and can be a stress on their immune system. A good cleanout schedule would include at least two short cleanouts per week. (Or consider a deep litter system as an alternative. — MOTHER.)

Because birds that are bred for production never completely stop laying through the winter, keep an eye on the nests during your daily checks. Eggs do not freeze quickly, but to prevent cracking, it’s best to collect them two or three times per day. Keeping your coop lights on for 15-16 hours each day will encourage hens to lay. Following the schedule you choose is crucial. Even a delay of 20 or 30 minutes can affect the birds. Most folks who use this system often employ a simple lamp or appliance timer to keep the schedule accurate. Lighting doesn’t have to be bright, but it shouldn’t be noticeably dim. A 100-watt incandescent bulb or equivalent per 800 square feet is usually sufficient.

Troubleshooting Cold-weather Poultry Problems

Here are a few extra pointers to help prevent common obstacles to successfully keeping poultry through the winter.

Freezing Conditions

A key aspect of raising poultry through the winter is to provide a constant supply of fresh water. Because most folks would rather avoid having to thaw the ice on the waterer several times per day for their birds, heated waterers are becoming popular. Many products are available, but we feel that one of the most versatile is our submersible water warmer. This unit can be used in pans of water, or under your existing waterer, to keep your birds with an uninterrupted supply. If you don’t use a heater, or if you do not have electricity in your coop, ensure that your birds have access to unfrozen water several times per day. Birds should not be left without water for more than a couple of hours at a time.

Frostbite

Frostbite is another common winter issue. Check your birds frequently. Frostbite commonly affects combs in chickens and feet in waterfowl, and can be avoided by keeping bedding clean and dry. The best type of bedding for cold weather is straw, as it holds heat better than any other material.

Contact with snow and ice can contribute to frostbitten feet — if your poultry can’t get away from it. You can solve this by maintaining a spot in your poultry yard covered with at least two inches of straw, large enough for all of your birds to fit comfortably at the same time. This will insulate their feet and provide an escape from the frozen areas.

Chickens’ combs often become frostbitten due to wind chill, rather than ambient temperature. Thaw the affected area with cold water, slowly warming it to room temperature. Then apply a coating of petroleum jelly to isolate it from direct contact with the cold. This treatment may need to be reapplied periodically, but it is usually invaluable, especially for quality show birds. Alternatively, you could hang a radiant or halogen poultry heater just above their head level and they will spend time under it, preventing the need for more involved care. If you are not able to locate any of these heater models, we carry a variety of options that have been tested and work best for us. Coop heaters come in several types, which primarily include hanging and floor models. The types we recommend usually radiate heat downward, but we also make floor heaters that radiate heat outward. These are especially handy for folks with limited headroom in their coops.

Predators

Shortage of food supply causes an increase in predation during the winter months. Losses to predators, such as hawks, raccoons and coyotes, are preventable — as long as a few of their basic behavior patterns are understood, they can easily be thwarted by a little forethought and preparation.

Raccoons are one of the most common predators. They are nocturnal, and can be the worst of the proverbial “fox in the henhouse,” sometimes killing, seemingly for sport, the majority of a flock in a single night. They normally work to gain access to your coop, rather than finding and enlarging a hole. They will remove loose boards or roof shingles, open simple latches (such as hook and eye) and reach through small holes to gain access to your coop. They have been known to be strong enough to tear chicken wire, and similar deterrents usually do not stop them. The best way to handle a raccoon problem is to secure the poultry housing and to be present if they begin to target your coop. Trapping can be effective.

Weasels and minks are harder to stop. They can fit into small openings and are hard to deter. Like raccoons, they usually kill in nighttime rampages that seem more for sport than food. But these creatures are relatively rare and often too timid to come near civilization.

Coyotes are easier to keep out due to their size and limitations. Simple fences will often take care of this problem, although they can burrow under them. A line of electrified wire near the top and bottom of the fence will keep them from digging or jumping over your fences. Coyotes work in groups or alone at any time of the day or night, and are capable of capturing birds as large as turkeys. Simple prevention in the fall will eliminate these predators for the rest of the year.

Hawks aren’t limited by fences and normally do not try to gain access to the coop. Most often, they snatch birds in daylight while foraging. There is really no better way to protect your birds from these aerial predators than to raise geese with them, or to set up bird netting on the tops of your pens. Hawks usually take only one bird at a time and leave only feathers behind as evidence.

There are many products on the market designed to deter these predators. One of the most effective for night predators is the Sentry, a motion activated LED light that senses predators from a distance and flashes on for a few seconds, often scaring them away permanently.

If you are not sure which type of predators you have in your area, check the tracks around your place or use a field guide to determine the source of the problem and the best course of action. Local water sources are a good place to look for tracks.

General guidelines and summary

Even though most backyard flocks are commonly out in harsh conditions during the winter, they are quite hardy and, if cared for properly, will make it through without any difficulty, resuming production in the spring.

Rats and mice may be your biggest problems. Not only do they carry disease, but they invariably leave contaminated droppings that eventually wind up in your bird’s diets after they get into the feed. It’s best to store feed in metal containers, such as new trash cans, to keep mice and other critters out. Feed left in bags unprotected will most certainly be taken advantage of by populations of smaller rodents. Wooden or plastic containers usually keep these pests out for only a short time.

Occasionally putting a vitamin-electrolyte supplement in water can help keep your poultry healthy. Even commercially prepared feeds cannot replace the green forage available in warmer months, and supplements help temporarily restore the natural balance. In conjunction with the fattening mentioned above, this type of feed program will usually ensure top productivity — as soon as spring comes again. We can’t too strongly emphasize the basic principles of proper feeding and monitoring during the winter. In warm months, birds can take care of themselves to a greater degree, but the cold season in many areas is a time of survival for poultry. If you are aiming for top production and healthy birds, taking care of them properly will reduce problems in the future.

An important aspect of this is to give your birds appropriate (broiler, production, or maintenance) feed that is full strength — no scratch grain added. Scratch feeds can be used as outlined above, but it cannot replace the proper feed schedule. If your feed store does not have a good variety of feeds, you should provide unmedicated feed to your birds and feed only the appropriate rations to certain groups. For example, chicks should get chick starter or broiler feed up to their twelfth week, ducklings should be started on a waterfowl starter-grower or broiler feed until their sixth month, and birds that are laying or past their sixth month should get either a layer feed or breeder ration. Mature birds can be put on a maintenance ration through the winter.

Check on your birds to observe any inconsistencies or irregularities. If you listen to your birds, you should not hear heavy breathing, wheezing or coughing. Limping birds should be isolated until they are ready to go back with the rest of your flock. Ideally, keep a notebook handy to jot notes and keep records of feed consumption, weights, water shortages and miscellaneous occurrences. The more accurate and complete your notes are, the better you will be able to foresee problems the next time.

If your birds become ill, your local county agricultural extentionists usually have great information. They often give advice that is just as good as a vet’s, and will know when to refer you to one.

Winter illnesses are rarely significant but can become problematic if left unattended. The standard procedures for treatment of illness include quarantining the bird and using a broad-spectrum antibiotic, such as Terramycin, in feed or water, depending on which type of antibiotic you have. But this is only necessary when simply warming the affected bird is not sufficient to restore its normal hardy nature.

Winter should not be a problem for your flock, but rather a steppingstone to the following year! Just don’t forget to check on the birds!

We’ve completed the Community Chickens projects for 2009. It’s been a great experience to test incubators, feed and equipment. We’ve had fun hatching a variety of eggs and raising all sorts of poultry.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the things I’ve learned throughout the process:

Shipping hatching eggs significantly reduces the hatch rate, but it’s still a great way to get the type of birds you want. (What to Expect When Purchasing Shipped Hatching Eggs).

Storing eggs reduces the number of chicks that will hatch from them. (How to Improve Hatch Rates and Tips on Hatching Eggs and Starting Baby Chicks from an Expert)

Using incubators that frequently turn eggs and precisely control temperate and humidity improve hatch rates significantly. (Improve Hatch Rates with the Right Incubator and Incubating Duck Eggs Successfully)

Using broody hens to raise a few chicks is a great idea — but you have to work in the dark to make things work smoothly. (Using a Foster Broody Hen to Raise Chicks)

Even if you don’t have room for chickens, quails are lots of fun, and productive egg layers. (Keeping Quails: Newly Hatched Baby Quails and Keeping Quails: Gender Differentiation)

Sharing the experience of processing meat birds fosters a sense of community and encourages reflection in ways you might not expect. (Processing Broiler Chickens and Chicken Processing at Home Reinforces Feelings for Processing Meat Myself)

We’ll continue to share what we’re learning about poultry and community in future blogs here and on Grit.com.

I’ve been using a small backyard chicken coop, the Back Porch Chicken Coop from GardenEggs.com, for the last several months. It’s housed a cockerel and three pullets that aren’t quite old enough to be laying eggs yet. The bottom of this backyard chicken coop is wire mesh to allow in fresh air. The mesh pattern isn’t quite large enough for droppings to fall through. Adding some wood chips or other bedding makes cleanout easier.

I’ve also used this portable chicken coop to hold two broody hens until they accepted some broiler chicks. (Read Using a Foster Broody Hen to Raise Chicks.) In this situation, I lined the bottom of the coop with feed bags and covered the bags with wood chips. The hens fit nicely behind the roost, so you could easily build a nest into one corner if you want to keep a few laying hens in this coop.

This small chicken coop is light enough to be moved easily by two people, though it’s not on wheels, and the design concept is simple. If you allow your hens to range during the day, this is a nice little coop for keeping them safe and dry at night.

Photos by Troy Griepentrog

I'm trying something new: starting a "grass-fed eggs" movement as a way of promoting great-tasting eggs from happy outdoor hens. People have become cynical about the term "free-range," which often doesn't mean what people want it to mean. Everyone wants free-range eggs to be eggs from happy outdoor hens who have something better than a barren yard to forage around in, but that's not what they get. So I'm hoping my as-yet unsullied "grass-fed eggs" term will fare a little better.

You probably already know that grass-fed eggs are the best-tasting eggs ever, have superior nutrition and are environmentally friendly. And the flocks are way more picturesque, aesthetically pleasing and fun than the alternatives. But lots of people don't know this yet! It's an easy sell, though. We just have to spread the word.

I picked the term "grass-fed eggs" because it doesn't quite make sense — eggs don't eat grass, or anything else, for that matter. So when people see the term, they have to ask about it. (Of course, it's the hens that eat the grass, not the eggs.) The cartoon was chosen for the same reasons: to evoke the idea of happy outdoor eggs (or maybe chickens) in a way that has some appeal, but which still makes people ask the question.

Once they ask the question, we can pony up the answers without boring them. Much better than button-holing people and talking to them about eggs when they haven't asked!

I don't like rigid definitions, so my take on grass-fed eggs is that the ideal is "great-tasting eggs from happy outdoor chickens who get lots of fresh green plants to eat." But mostly the key is to acknowledge the ideal, while doing the best you can under the circumstances. It's hard to have grass-fed eggs or happy outdoor chickens when there's 6 feet of snow on the ground. It's hard to have free-range hens in a suburban backyard. Do the best you can, and don't let people tell you that your approach isn't pure enough.

This is also my answer to the supply-and-demand problem. Hardly anyone is making a living from growing grass-fed eggs, so consumers need to hook up with people who are doing it as a sideline — or raise a few hens of their own. The small scale of most operations blurs the difference between consumers and producers: many people have hens some of the time, but not always. So this is not a consumer movement or a producer movement, but a "people who like grass-fed eggs and happy outdoor chickens" movement.

One of these days, someone will figure out a business model that allows people of ordinary ability to make a living at grass-fed egg farming. When that happens, the eggs will become a lot easier to find in stores. But that hasn't happened yet. Not even close. I certainly haven't quit my day job! So let's start with the problem in front of us: popularizing the notion and hooking up consumers and producers. With enough demand, commerce on a larger scale will follow.

To help get the ball rolling, I've ponied up three sets of resources:

• A website at http://www.grass-fed-eggs.com. This is the clearinghouse of information that's coming from me. It's still sort of skeletal, but check it out anyway.
  
• A discussion group at Google Groups. This is the clearinghouse of information from everybody who cares about grass-fed eggs: producers and consumers. Topics will include how to find grass-fed eggs, how to sell them, backyard housing, predator control, dealing with neighbors who don't like chickens, and so on. Post your questions here!
  
• A line of Grass-Fed Egg merchandise. As I already mentioned, when someone sees your "I Heart Grass-Fed Eggs" T-shirt, shopping tote or mouse pad, they'll ask you about it. This gives you the chance to give them your spiel and maybe press some eggs into their hands to ensure their conversion. It's also a good way for people who are already sold on the concept to identify each other. We're pretty scattered!
  Anyway, check out the website, the discussion group and the goodies. I'm hoping we can change the world one egg at a time, with a totally grass-roots, non-hierarchical movement. I expect it to be great fun.

I’ve been telling people for quite a while: Real environmentalists eat white chicken eggs. That’s because white-egg layers are almost always more feed efficient: Hens that lay white eggs are lighter weight and eat less feed to produce the same amount of eggs as brown-egg layers. So, brown chicken eggs require more resources to produce.

Here’s an Example

Hy-Line is a large poultry genetics corporation. Their website says that Hy-Line W-36 hens (the “world’s most efficient egg layer,” according to the site) consume 1.82 pounds of feed to produce a pound of eggs (white eggs). Hy-Line Brown hens eat 2.02 pounds of feed to produce a pound of eggs (brown eggs).

For reference, a dozen large eggs weighs about a pound and a half. So if your family eats 50 dozen eggs a year, it would take 15 pounds less feed to produce the same amount of white chicken eggs as brown chicken eggs. (See calculations below.) Multiply that by all the families that eat brown eggs, and we could produce much less grain to produce the same amount of chicken eggs.

Then, I watched this video:

Whether we eat conventional, industrial brown chicken eggs or conventional, industrial white chicken eggs, the male chicks of these egg-laying strains are destroyed at the hatchery because they’re not good meat-producing birds — they’re inefficient at converting feed to meat.

I’m not prepared to become a vegan, for a bunch of reasons I won’t mention here. So, what’s a meat-eating environmentalist to do? Buy eggs from a farmer who raises dual-purpose heritage breeds. Heritage breeds aren’t as specialized as commercial breeds of egg-layers. They’re pretty good at producing eggs and pretty good at producing meat, so raising the males for meat and the females to produce eggs makes sense — without discarding half the chicks.

Some of these heritage breeds lay white eggs and some lay brown eggs, but the biggest factor is management. It’s time to start telling people that egg color doesn’t matter. Real (omnivorous) environmentalists eat pastured poultry from heritage-breed, free-range production systems.

Using pasture farming methods, giving the birds room to roam, access to sunshine and all the bugs and seeds they can eat (in addition to necessary supplemental feed), produces the most healthful eggs and meat. And, if heritage chicken breeds are involved, you can enjoy the eggs knowing that half the birds weren’t simply discarded.

For more information on egg labels and the benefits of pasture farming methods, read Free Range vs. Pastured: Chicken and Eggs and The Amazing Benefits of Grass-fed Meat.

Calculations

50 dozen eggs x 1.5 pounds = 75 pounds of eggs

75 pounds of eggs x 2.02 pounds of feed = 151.5 pounds of feed to produce brown chicken eggs for your family for a year

75 pounds of eggs x 1.82 pounds of feed = 136.5 pounds of feed to produce white chicken eggs for your family for a year

151.5 – 136.5 = 15 pounds of feed saved

An experienced pasture-raised poultry expert, Robert Plamondon, shares his thoughts on the best methods of keeping free-range chickens.

I have found that the best way of containing free-range chickens and pastured broilers is with electric fences. Electric fencing keeps the chickens in and the predators out.

Predator control is especially important to me, because I have been almost put out of business by predation several times. If it weren't for the techniques described here, I wouldn't have any chickens today.

Electric fences are also much less expensive and easier to set up than alternative methods of confining them.

Here is an introduction to the topic.

1. Simple one-wire and two-wire electric fences.

2. Electric Poultry Netting.

3. Adding hot wires to your existing fences.

4. Choosing an electric fence energizer.

Few experiences in life compare to the wondrous event of witnessing a baby chicken labor with instinctive determination and emerge from an egg. Being a spectator of this miraculous event is the motivation that prompts many people to attempt incubating and hatching eggs. Regardless of the reasons behind your decision, knowing what to reasonably expect when purchasing shipped hatching eggs can make your experience more pleasurable and helps to ease potential disappointment.

When discussing shipped hatching eggs with an individual, I always remind them of the risk involved when purchasing eggs and the difference between an infertile egg and a nonviable egg.

Shipped hatching eggs may travel a great distance and experience excessive variations in climate, including temperature, humidity and pressure changes that may occur with fluctuations in altitude. These conditions, coupled with the possibility of simple human carelessness when handling the package, can decrease the likelihood of a successful hatch.

Because of these factors, a fertile and viable egg can be packed into a box, shipped to you and arrive in a nonviable state. When candling the eggs, nonviable eggs appear clear, just as infertile eggs do. When cracked open upon completion of incubation, you can see by close visual inspection that these nonviable eggs were fertile and became nonviable from exposure to extreme conditions.

So, why would a person accept the risk and purchase shipped hatching eggs when they understand that there is a possibility the eggs may not hatch? There are a variety of reasons:

• The minimum order requirement for baby chicks from hatcheries is 25 chicks (too many for some people to manage).
• A particular breed may only be available from an individual breeder who doesn’t ship live chicks.
• Ordering hatching egg, instead of live chicks, may be more affordable.

Incubating eggs that have been shipped through the mail can be and is successful for countless people just like you everyday. With simple preparation and correct incubation techniques, you can successfully hatch your own chicks.

To increase your chances for success, clean and turn on your incubator a couple of days prior to the arrival of your hatching eggs. Be certain that your incubator is maintaining proper, consistent temperature and humidity for the kind of eggs you are hatching and for your type of incubator. Still air units will require a slightly different temperature than forced air units (follow the manufacturer’s instructions).

When your eggs arrive, carefully unwrap the eggs and inspect them. Discard any broken or cracked eggs and notify your supplier of the damage. If the eggs are very dirty, a light and gentle rinsing under water will not harm them. Place the eggs to be incubated pointy end down into an egg carton or egg-hatching tray at room temperature for 24 hours prior to placing them in your preheated incubator. This “resting” period can greatly increase your chances of a successful hatch by allowing the air cell within the egg to settle back into proper position. This resting period is the same if you are using a broody hen as your incubator.

Acquiring hatching eggs has never been easier. The resources are vast and hatching eggs can be found everywhere from online auction sites to websites that specialize in the sale of hatching eggs.

Incubating your own hatching eggs can be very rewarding and enjoyable. Understanding and accepting the reality that even the most experienced person has unsuccessful hatches occasionally, will help avoid the disappointment that we each have felt at times from a failed attempt at hatching shipped eggs. The successful hatches far outweigh the latter. Proper technique and perseverance will reward you with an incubator full of peeping chicks.

Julie and Michael Gabbard own and run Gabbard Farms.

Our final chicken egg incubation test for the Community Chickens project is complete. We set eggs from Gabbard Farms in a Brinsea Octagon 20 Eco and Brinsea Mini Advance. I had great success incubating duck eggs in the Octagon Eco and wanted to see how the Mini would compare.

We received eggs of three breeds of white-egg layers: Golden Penciled Hamburgs, Silver Spangled Hamburgs and Appenzeller Spitzhaubens. Overall, 75 percent of the eggs were fertile. That’s good this time of year. Usually, fertility starts to drop in April or May and hits a low point between June and August (this varies depending on your location and climate). The eggs we set were laid in July, so fertility levels above 70 percent are perfectly acceptable. And I didn't open the eggs that were "clear" when I candled them, so more may have been fertile. Shipping eggs lowers the hatch rate, too.

Once again, the Brinsea incubators performed above expectations. All six of the fertile eggs in the Mini hatched (100 percent), and 15 of the 17 fertile eggs in the Octagon Eco hatched (88 percent hatch rate). Overall hatch rates, not accounting for fertility, were 62.5 percent for the Octagon Eco and 85.7 percent for the Mini.

And the incubators were easy to operate. Both incubators have automatic turning, and I set the Mini to turn eggs every hour for a fair comparison. The Mini can be set to turn eggs as frequently as every 45 minutes. Turning the eggs during incubation prevents the embryos from sticking to the shells and exercises the chicks. (See How to Improve Hatch Rates.)

The digital features of the Mini Advance make it a bit easier to set and operate, plus the range of options is a little broader than for the Octagon Eco. But you can buy a digital version of the Octagon Eco, too. It’s called the Octagon 20 Advance, and digital humidity display is a wonderful feature of the Octagon Advance. Humidity is such an important part of good incubation, and other methods of determining humidity levels are not precise.

If you’re planning to hatch a small number of eggs (such as in a classroom setting or as part of a small backyard poultry hobby), the Mini Advance is a great choice. You can see the eggs and hatching chicks just a bit better in this model. If you want to hatch a few more eggs at a time (up to 24 chicken eggs), buy the Octagon Eco or Advance. The value of more healthy, live chicks per hatch easily makes up for the cost difference between these incubators and the small Styrofoam incubators.

We’ve been hatching eggs in incubators for more than 12 years, and my wife’s comment sums it all up: “Using these incubators makes hatching eggs much more fun. More chicks hatch, and they don’t need help hatching.”

Here are the some photos of the two-day-old chicks.

Golden Penciled Hamburg chicks

Silver Spangled Hamburg chicks

Appenzeller Spitzhauben chicks

All the chicks in our GQF brooder. We put paper towels over the wire floor for the first few days so we can scatter feed on the floor until the chicks learn where the feeders are.

Photos by Troy Griepentrog

Bob Berry owns Bob’s Biddies, a small hatchery that specializes in Rhode Island Red and Dominique chickens in Ray City, Ga. Berry hatches 1,000 Rhode Island Red chicks and 500 Dominique chicks each month throughout the year. About 85 percent of the eggs he incubates hatch. We talked with Berry to ask his advice on incubating eggs.

How did you get started in the hatchery business?

When I was a youngster, we always raised a lot of chickens. Some were sold as grown chickens, and we sold eggs, too. I’ve always had a love for chickens. Taking care of them was part of my daily chores.

My professional career took me a different route. When I had to retire, my wife Diane and I tried to come up with something that I could do while she’s at work. I decided to start working with poultry again .Because I have physical limitations, the hatchery venture seemed to make sense.

Why did you choose to specialize in Rhode Island Reds and Dominiques?

We tried other breeds. But the Rhode Island Reds and Dominiques are old breeds that most people are familiar with. Both breeds are great egg-layers.

What are the most important things to remember when incubating eggs?

Other than temperature, humidity is the most important thing. Keep it between 58 and 62 percent for the first 18 days of incubation. Increase humidity the three days prior to hatching.

Turning of the eggs frequently is also important.

There's no need to turn eggs while they're in storage prior to putting them in the incubator, but store them at 52 to 58 degrees Fahrenheit.

Don't wash eggs if you plan to incubate them.

Keep good records and calendar reminders, too. I move hatching eggs from the incubator to a hatcher unit a few days before they hatch. If you keep eggs in the incubator too long and they hatch while it is still in the rotation mode, you end up with a big mess. I’ve miscalculated days and speak from experience.

Do have any advice for starting chicks that come in the mail?

Just before a chick hatches, it absorbs the last part of the egg yoke, which allows the chick to survive the first three days without water or food. So, there’s only a small window of time to work with. I tell all of my customers to start the chicks on sugar water as soon as the chicks arrive — and keep them on this for the first two weeks. I have used this method for a long time, and it has proved itself. I also advise customers to get a good chick starter feed or a combination starter/grower.

As I went out with a bucket to feed my Australian Emus, there arose a raucous ruckus in the nearby, freshly hayed field. Cheee-cheee-cheeeeee! This is the alert of the guineas. Being a dutiful poultry keeper, I investigated and there it was ... poor thing! A small red fox was being routed by my guineas. Snatching up my digital camera, I ran out into the field to snap some shots of this common chicken predator. It’s one thing to say that guineas are the first alert system on any poultry operation; it’s another to see it. The photo shows the sad little fox making a dash home with no chicken dinner.

The first line of defense against poultry predators is well-constructed housing. I have no protected run for my chickens, as all my birds are free-ranging. In more restricted areas, you’ll need a run or portable coop for your birds during the day. High chicken-wire sides and netting on the top are adequate to curb birds of prey and rascally dogs in your neighborhood. At night, all poultry should be in a locked and secure roosting area, winter or summer. This is a necessity. Most predators visit at night — just at sunset and prior to sunrise. Leave no food or scraps around that would attract predators of chickens to a free meal. It’s best to feed your birds inside their enclosures, as they are also vulnerable when gathered at feeders.

Elevate your buildings. A coop constructed on stilts or a truss, such as those decks are built on, will prevent problems with mice and rats. Elevated structures also provide shelter for hens to run under in the case of a storm or high-speed flyby by a Red-tailed Hawk!

Guineas are a good first line of defense, as they fearlessly chase off dreaded squirrels, deer, stealthy cats, and — as of 20 minutes ago around here — a fox. Unfortunately, they also sound the alarm when they see the mail carrier, a new car, or their owner walking out of a side door to sip coffee in the morning sun! Their reputation as the noisiest barnyard residents is well earned. In exchange, they eat every imaginable bug.

This leads to a related topic ... snakes. Some perceive snakes as pests, or threats to their chickens: the dreaded egg-eaters, chick-snatchers or hen-stranglers. I understand that it’s easy to give a snake a thwack and appear the hero of the neighborhood. But consider what sort of snakes are actually in your area. Are they truly a threat to your livestock or to you?

Unless you live in Africa or Australia, chances are good that most snakes in your part of the country are helpful rather than detrimental. Consider the common garter snake (there are many sub-species). It eats slugs, worms, tiny amphibians and other creepy crawlers that most people want to eradicate. They don’t eat warm-blooded anything and cannot swallow a chicken egg. So, if you choose to be a meanie, then do what you will.

I say, “Save the snakes!” I leave you with an image of a little brown snake (also known as DeKay’s snake). It was under a water bucket, and I decided to photograph it for your viewing pleasure. It’s fat with slug supper, garnished with a worm or two. I picked it up and parked it neatly on this moss. Please focus on real pests and let nature benefit us with species already in place designed to do so.

If you'd like to learn more about raising chickens, check out the DVD, Regarding Chickens.

Photos by Frederick J. Dunn

In Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch, I wrote that there are pros and cons to both natural incubation (broody hens) and artificial incubation (using electric incubators). One of my broody hens left a nest of eggs, and the electricity was out for a while. But there’s good news, too.

Although the temperature in the electric incubator dropped to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, 12 of the 35 pheasant eggs still hatched. That’s a 34 percent hatch rate. It wasn’t a total loss.

After the broody hen left the nest, I put them under a different broody and none of them hatched. (OK, that’s not good news.) But another broody did a great job and hatched seven of the nine eggs she was sitting on — a 78 percent hatch rate. Even if you average the two hens, that’s still a 39 percent hatch rate.

Of the 214 pheasant eggs we were incubating in the GQF 1202A incubator, 86 chicks hatched (40 percent). Because we wanted to set all the eggs at one time, we stored 152 of the hatching eggs for four days before them in the incubator. About 44 percent of the fresh eggs hatched. Only 39 percent of the eggs hatched from the group that was stored longer. All the eggs were shipped to us through the mail, so none were perfectly fresh.

We also didn’t turn 42 of the eggs for the first six days of incubation. This was a test to see how not turning the eggs would affect hatch rates. About 42 percent of the eggs that were turned more frequently hatched. They were turned automatically every four hours from the second day of incubation through the fifteenth day of incubation. Only 33 percent of the eggs that weren’t turned as frequently hatched. I stopped turning all the eggs about eight days before they hatched because I was going to be out of the office. Normally, I’d stop turning the eggs only three days before they’re supposed to hatch.

This was a limited test, but the advice of most experts to turn eggs frequently and not store them before incubation seems to be accurate. If you store eggs or don’t turn them, you can expect lower hatch rates. We also noticed several chicks with leg problems. Although this could be genetic, most likely the problems were due to infrequent turning of the eggs and storing the eggs too long.

Who can resist estimating or daydreaming about how many of the eggs in the incubator or under a broody hen will hatch? Hatching eggs is certainly exciting and fun.

For the Community Chickens project, we have 152 pheasant eggs from MacFarlane Pheasants and 62 from Oakwood Game Farm (a total of 214 eggs) in the GQF 1202A incubator. As a little experiment, I didn’t turn 42 of the eggs for the first six days. They were in the hatching tray instead of the trays that are turned automatically.

Most books recommend turning the eggs at least three times per day from the second day of incubation until about three days before the expected hatch date. Turning the eggs prevents the embryos from sticking to the shells and makes chicks stronger by giving them exercise. Some people I’ve spoken with say that turning eggs doesn’t increase hatch rates or health of chicks at all. The pheasant eggs should hatch late next week. I’ll share the results with you.

So that we don’t have all our pheasant eggs in one incubator, I also have 35 eggs in the Brinsea Octogon 20 Eco in my basement. Yesterday when I came home from work, an electrical breaker had flipped, and the incubator wasn’t getting electricity. The eggs had cooled below 90 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m not sure how long they were chilled, but I hope the eggs were far enough into the incubation (two weeks) that some of the embryos will still survive.

I also have two broody chicken hens setting on nine eggs each. This morning when I opened the crate to water one of them, she left the nest. Sometimes a broody hen will do this just to stretch, eat and defecate. Other times she’ll leave for good. She didn’t return to the nest after about 15 minutes, so I put her eggs under another broody hen that was setting on two infertile eggs. I left the infertile eggs for the hen that left the nest, just in case she returns.

Between an electricity outage and an unreliable broody hen, I many not get any chicks or pheasant chicks at home. Then again, you never know. There’s no point in trying to count them now — until they’ve hatched.

The chickens are pooping all over the front porch again, and my wife is a very special woman.

Almost every week, at some point or another, Carolyn says how happy she is to live at Rancho Cappuccino, surrounded by the wildlife and the livestock, steeping in nature’s own exotic brew of life, death, struggle and ecstasy.

Sounds great, you may say, but the chickens are pooping all over the porch. The geese are pooping all over the lawn. The manure in the sheep pen is two feet deep right now and  the pasture where the cattle are grazing, well, it’s a cow pasture. Talk about your exotic brews.

The cow is a virtuosic defecator. They poop more, larger, wetter, deeper, noisier and more often than anyone else on the farm.

But all God’s children leave their mark.

The chickens leave theirs on the front porch.

My wife’s friends are revolted. Who can blame them?

But my wife is a very special woman.

We’ve tried solutions to the chicken problem. We tried fake snakes. The chickens ignored them, then killed a real snake and left it there, next to the fake snakes on the porch, to express their disdain I guess. This really happened. No kidding.

Then we created a barrier of silk flowers in little buckets. The chickens steer clear. Guests have to step over them.

Of course the chickens still do their business all over the sidewalk and the drive way and the lawn.

I’m acutely conscious that there are very few roommates who would put up with this, and almost all of them are men. If you think I’m being a sexist,  you have an invitation to come help me clean the sheep pen. Then we can talk about my prejudices.

I figure if Carolyn decided to divorce me, I could either move to town or be single for life. I try to think of some other attractive woman who would be willing to join me at the Rancho. I can’t. Even some of the best sports I know can’t hide the little grimaces that say, “How can they live like this? How can she live like this?”

So here’s to Carolyn, with all my gratitude. I’ll make sure I take my boots off every time I come inside. Promise. Unless I forget.

Chickens and other fowl have played a large role in history. The first book in the United States that was dedicated entirely to poultry was The American Poultry Book, published in 1843. You can find that historic book and over 1,000 others at the Leonora Hering Memorial Poultry Collection on the campus of Kansas State University.

You don’t have to be a student to access this special collection. Anyone can use the books for research 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. People come from around the world to read these books, which cover more than U.S. poultry. The collection includes an original copy of Aldrovandi's work on ornithology (this link is to a German site, but it has scanned pages of the original books) published in the early 17^th century in Latin. One volume focuses on poultry. If your Latin is a little rusty, you can read the English translations in the collection.

The library would like to add to the collection, as the donor, Lenora Hering, stopped collecting in the 1980s. For example, if you happen to have an original 1886 copy of The Book of Hamburgs by L. Frank Baum (yep, he wrote more than the Wizard of Oz) the library would gladly accept it.

To find out what’s available before making the trip, search the online catalog. If you’re looking for something special, Roger Adams, the librarian, can help you find it.

Photo by Troy Griepentrog

Five chicks (from the Community Chickens project) hatched late (on a Saturday). They needed a little extra attention, and my wife Sue and I had them in a homemade brooder. The following Tuesday, we noticed that one of our hens didn’t roost at night, but stayed on the nest. That’s a good sign the hen was broody, or “clucking,” as my family used to say.

My mind started to race: What kind of eggs could we give that old cluck hen to hatch?

But Sue had a better idea: Let’s see if the broody hen would foster the five chicks we had in the brooder. I had recently read about Gwen Roland using a broody hen to raise some broiler chickens (Raising Chickens for Meat: Do-it-yourself Pastured Poultry).

On Wednesday morning while it was still dark outside, I moved the broody hen to a secluded box to see if she’d continue to cluck. I left two eggs for her, and she was setting tightly — fluffing up to look intimidating when I’d check on her. By Friday night, I was satisfied that she was committed to the project.

Saturday morning (so I’d have more time to watch the results), I took the chicks from the brooder box — again before sunrise — and tucked them under the old cluck hen’s wings. Although they’d been under a heat lamp for a week, they seemed to sense the hen’s warmth and nestled right in.

The broody hen immediately gathered the chicks, keeping them under her wings. She seemed a little confused by their activity throughout the day and didn’t really want to get off the eggs. In the evening, I removed the eggs. (There were three eggs. She must have laid one more the day I moved her to seclusion.)

Sunday afternoon, I moved the hen and chicks to a small portable coop. The chicks are doing well with their foster mother, and we’re happy to have one less brooder to box to manage during this busy summer.

Photo by Troy Griepentrog

As I mentioned in Which Poultry Hatching Eggs are in Which Incubator?, I had been incubating duck eggs (20 Golden 300 Hybrid eggs) in a Brinsea Octagon 20 Eco poultry incubator. In my old Styrofoam incubator, I had another 20 Golden 300 eggs and 12 Pekin duck hatching eggs. I’ve been using my old incubator for 12 years and wanted to see how the Octagon compared. Which would be the best incubator?

The Octagon 20 won the competition easily: 18 of the 20 eggs hatched! A 90 percent hatch rate is absolutely remarkable. It’s also amazing that all of the eggs were fertile — the parent flock must have been managed nearly perfectly.

I’ve never been so successful hatching duck eggs or any other eggs. We may have had a 95 percent hatch if I hadn’t cracked one egg slightly when returning it to the incubator after candling it.

Of the 32 eggs in my Styrofoam incubator, I removed seven eggs during candling. They were either clear or had a blood ring in them, which means the embryo started to develop and died. One of the Golden 300 eggs from this group was clear, so I assume it was infertile. One duckling died during hatching, and five eggs didn’t hatch at all. That’s about a 60 percent hatch rate overall — about what I’d normally expect from this incubator using eggs received in the mail.

Both incubators were in my basement, where the temperature and humidity were consistent. But the temperature in the old incubator fluctuated about 6 degrees at various times, and because I don’t have an automatic turner in it, I only turned the eggs once each day. The automatic turner on the Octagon turned the eggs every hour.

Keeping the temperature consistent and turning the eggs frequently seem to have made a huge difference. If you’re thinking about buying a small incubator, I recommend the Brinsea Octagon 20. I’m thoroughly impressed by it.

Duckling photo: Matthew T. Stallbaumer

Incubator photo: Courtesy Brinsea

PHOTO BY TROY GRIEPENTROG

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a broody hen and my concerns about the eggs hatching, Hatching Eggs: Broody Chickens and Duck Eggs on the Way. It’s very unusual for chicken eggs to hatch so late, but on the 23rd day of incubation, three eggs hatched. One chick was a runt and died a few days later, but the other two chicks are doing well.

The hen has been doing a great job taking care of the baby chicks: showing them what to eat, protecting them and keeping them warm. I love the clucking sound she makes to call them to food. I guess that’s the reason people sometimes call broodies “clucks.”

Lots of things can go wrong when hatching eggs in an incubator. (Power outages spring to mind.) But it’s important to know that natural incubation methods aren’t foolproof either. Only two or three of the dozen eggs she was sitting on were not fertile, so the rest didn’t hatch for other reasons: wrong temperature, wrong humidity, nutrition of parents or something else.

The Community Chickens project is at an eggciting stage: the incubators are filled with a variety of poultry hatching eggs. We’re hatching a bunch of eggs so that people in our office can try raising a few chickens, ducks or quail. You might be interested to know exactly what we’re hatching and in what kind of incubators, so here’s the list.

In the office, we have a GQF 1202A Sportsman incubator provided by Sure Hatch. It’s loaded with 222 chicken eggs!

20 Golden Comet eggs from Ridgway Hatchery
24 Brown egg layer eggs from Moyers Chicks
90 Dominique and 40 Rhode Island Red eggs from Bob Berry Hatchery
24 Buff Orpington and 24 Silkie eggs from Ideal Poultry

These are divided into three separate hatch dates. Plus, we have 13 Coturnix quail eggs from Purely Poultry. Most people would not recommend mixing different types of poultry hatching eggs in an incubator, but we had some leftover quail eggs, and I couldn’t make myself throw out viable hatching eggs.

In a Brinsea Octagon 20 Eco incubator, I have 20 Golden 300 duck eggs from Metzer Farms. I have another 20 Golden 300 eggs, plus 12 Pekin duck eggs from Hoffman Hatchery, in my old Styrofoam incubator. I’ve used that old incubator for about 12 years. It was originally a still-air model, but over the years, I’ve added a fan and replaced the thermostat.

Compared to my old incubator, the Octagon keeps the temperature remarkably stable. And although I’ve always enjoyed the hands-on experience of turning eggs, the automatic turning feature of the Octagon is a real time-saver. The duck eggs are about half way through the incubation process. So far, I’m really impressed with the Octagon.

Helen has 12 White Silkie eggs and  24 assorted bantam eggs from Meyer Hatchery in a still-air incubator from Murray McMurray Hatchery.

In a Brinsea Octagon 20 Advance incubator, Hank has the 20 duck eggs from Ridgway Hatchery. Jim has another 15 duck eggs in a turbo fan incubator from Stromberg’s Chicks and Gamebirds.

Kate has 20 Golden 300 Hybrid duck eggs from Metzer Farms and 22 Pekin duck eggs from Hoffman Hatchery in a Brower Top Hatch incubator.

Connie has 12 Pharoah/Coturnix quail eggs from Purely Poultry in a Brinsea R-Com incubator.

Look for hatch results in future blogs!

It’s not something new. They’ve been around for a long time. But the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy recently defined “heritage chicken” so that consumers have a better idea of what they’re buying when they see meat with a heritage chicken label.

Mother Earth News interviewed Marjorie Bender and Jennifer Kendall, who explain what defines a heritage chicken and how chickens are certified. We also interviewed Frank Reese Jr., who is well known for the production of heritage turkeys. But he's raised heritage chickens just as long. You might be surprised by what Reese has to say about pastured poultry and the economics of raising heritage chickens.

What’s the definition of a heritage chicken?

How are chickens certified as "heritage chickens"?

Why should people be interested in heritage chickens? Isn’t “pastured poultry” good enough?

So, what breeds of heritage chickens do you raise, Mr. Reese, and why did you choose them?

I thought the  American Poultry Association only promoted show poultry. Can raising chickens that meet those standards still be profitable?

You can learn more about heritage chickens by visiting the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy's heritage chicken page and reading these blogs:

Chicken Choosin Decides Dorking Chicken is Best Eating
Best Tasting Heritage Chicken Breed

We have a broody hen that’s been sitting on eggs for three weeks. Today should be hatch day! For the last few days, though, she’s been off the nest quite a lot. The eggs look dirty. And much of the time she’s simply hovering over them — even standing on them. She still seems broody, though, so I’m not quite sure what’s going. (It’s been quite a while since I’ve used a broody to hatch eggs.) Two things come to mind: 1) The chicks in the eggs are creating enough heat that the hen doesn’t need to sit right on them all the time, or 2) something is wrong with the broody hen and she’s not going to pull off this hatch. I’ll write an update on that next week. In the mean time, share your thoughts on this in the comments section below.

Next week, the Community Chickens project will be off to an exciting start. Duck eggs will be arriving for us to use in our incubator tests. Metzer Farms will be sending 60 Golden 300 Hybrid eggs. We’re getting 35 Pekin duck eggs from Hoffman Hatchery. And Ridgway Hatcheries is sending an assortment of duck eggs.

I’ve been hoping to try a few of the Golden 300 Hybrid ducks for some time. They’re supposed to be excellent egg layers and calmer than Khaki Campbell ducks. A bonus for our project is that the male ducklings are shades of black; the females, shades of brown. We’ll be able to determine the gender of the ducklings easily. (Because they’re hybrids, this characteristic doesn’t continue in future generations.)

Duck eggs can be a challenge to hatch, so this will be a good test of the incubators. Duck and goose eggs require more humidity during incubation than chicken eggs. Another challenge is the wait! The duck eggs will take 28 to hatch (instead of just 21 for chickens).

The Community Chickens project is about to begin! Mother Earth News and our sister publication, Grit, are working together to test and tell you about all sorts of things related to poultry. Over the next few months, we’ll write about incubators, a brooder, feeders and waterers, fencing and feed.

We plan to hatch chicken, duck, guinea and turkey eggs, and we’ll share our experiences raising the babies. As always, we’ll provide information on alternative and time-tested methods. (See Furry and Feathered Friends Welcome on Grit’s website for photos of a broody hen and the chicks she hatched.)

While we’re waiting for the hatching eggs to arrive, I’ve set up the poultry box brooder from GQF Manufacturing. (I still need to install the light bulbs and remove some of the protective plastic from shipping.) It’s important to be ready for chicks when they arrive.

PHOTO BY TROY GRIEPENTROG

I’m looking forward to trying out the brooder. It should be easy to clean and make taking care of the new chicks easy. In the past, I’ve used various types of homemade brooders, including cardboard boxes with a small board across the top to suspend a heat lamp from. That works for a few birds for a short time, but it’s important to make sure the cardboard doesn’t get too warm and create a fire hazard.

A new website for the Community Chickens project will be live early next week. That site will give you easy access to all the information about the project, plus great tips on raising poultry. Check back for a link to that site.

PHOTO BY FREDERICK J. DUNN

Nothing says spring like the sound of peeps — newly hatched chickens — in my incubators. It seems to be the time of year when folks stop into the feed store or local hatchery expecting to begin their selection of new birds for their backyard barnyard. However, you may find it easier and more convenient to shop for your chicks online.

Here in the United States, the postal system accepts boxes filled with day-old chicks and delivers them coast to coast in two to three days on average. The chicks travel by Priority Mail and often have no food or water in their cardboard carrier to sustain them. How can this happen? Just prior to hatching, a chick absorbs all the remaining nutrients from within its egg. With this nourishment, the chick can survive for up to three days without food or water. This makes it possible to ship them by mail. In the nest, this process allows the mother to wait out the hatching of other chicks in her clutch before tending to the early hatchers: If chicks required immediate attention, the mother would leave with those that hatched first and the unhatched chicks would perish. Once again, nature has provided well for the chicken!

Selecting a hatchery to buy from couldn’t be simpler. You can start by visiting the Mother Earth News hatchery finder and search for the chicken breed or variety you want. You can also check the hatchery directory where you can sort hatcheries and poultry breeders by state or by company name for ease of reference. Nearly every variety of chicken, either purebred or hybrid, is now only a mouse-click away.

Take time to read about breeds you are interested in and understand what their unique characteristics are. This is a great opportunity to get children involved, showing them the various physical features of different breeds: comb type, leg feathering, silky, frizzle, bantam, standard, etc. You may read that some bantams are not “true bantams.” This is simply a variety which is a miniature version of a large standard breed. For example, a bantam Dark Brahma is a miniature, as it has a large counterpart by the same breed name. On the other hand, a Silver Sebright is a true bantam, meaning that it only exists in the miniature form with no large counterpart.

In the short video below, I demonstrate both the importance of having a brooder set up before your chicks arrive and of collecting the peeps as soon as you receive the call from the post office. Postal workers will gladly share stories about recipients who don’t seem to be in a rush to collect their chicks (waiting a day or more) only to collect a box of half perished little ones. If you are not ready to receive live chicks, do not place an order with a hatchery. 

Here's another useful video demonstrating how to place a catalog order to a hatchery, what the terms mean and what you may expect to pay for purebred poultry.

There are chickens and then there are CHICKENS! The modern factory-farmed chicken breed is a Leghorn. That breed’s ability to become broody and set a clutch of eggs to hatching stage has just about been bred out of them. Chickens that are hatched in incubators, as factory-farmed chickens are, do not need to know how to incubate and care for a brood of chicks.

However, most of the heritage breeds of chickens, those breeds that have been successful free rangers for generations, make great moms. There are also some poultry breeds that produce a slightly higher egg count per year, those that are easier to tame and others that seem to be especially good alarmists when danger approaches.

If you are keeping a small flock of chickens in your backyard or on a small acreage, tell us which breeds you have come to admire and why, in the comments section below.

PHOTO BY JENNA WOGINRICH

Spring is taking over Cold Antler Farm and all of us are happily surrendering to it. The snow is melting off the garden fences, the sheep are starting to hoof up green mosses and young grass, and the chickens are getting brave enough to hop down to the stream that was once blocked by snow. There are buckets and tubing on every sugar maple in the neighborhood, and with every spare minute I’m thinking about plans for spring chicks and new beehives.

Yes friends, spring is finally here. Time to start farming.

Regardless of whether your homestead is your backyard or a couple acres off grid, it's time to start planning for the spring. If you're looking into chickens and plan on ordering from a hatchery, take some time to find the birds closest to you. If you have a particular breed in mind (I'm looking forward to raising some Black Silkie Bantams) you can use the Mother Earth News Hatchery Finder to find the right birds at the right time for you.

You can start sowing seeds indoors for early crops like lettuces, peas and broccoli. And if you haven't already stepped outside, crossed your arms, and given your garden plot a long hard look — it's time to start planning where the bounty will begin. If you're new to gardening, don't be shy because you're in good company. Scads of new homesteaders and urban gardeners are taking the reins for the first time, and blogs and forums are heating up as they discuss big plans for new gardens. Sites like YouGrowGirl are a constant inspiration for me to get my fingernails dirty.

 Maybe this year is the year you'll start that new project? The rain barrel or compost turner you've secretly been eyeing in catalogs all winter may deserve a place in your budget. But before any dollars are spent on large purchases for your farm, make sure you use the elbow room spring allows to research exactly what you need. Save yourself the problems of returning items that don't work for you, or the disappointment of getting that prefab coop only to find it's 3 inches too wide.

 Most of all, enjoy these warmer days. Before you know it we'll be pulling off ticks and cursing the heat, so revel in the honeymoon while it lasts darlings.

PHOTO BY FREDERICK J. DUNN

Understanding the traits of a particular breed of animal you're considering (dog, cat, cow or in this case, chickens) will lead to a much better experience in the end. Different breeds will be more or less successful in each situation.

The advantage of obtaining purebred stock is that you will be making use, in some cases, of hundreds of years of selective breeding. Each breed emerged for a specific purpose: appearance, melodious crow, propensity to fight, rapid weight gain or regular production of eggs. Some people even rear chickens for their colorful feathers that will be used by fly-tying enthusiasts. You wouldn’t get a teacup poodle to guard an estate, so why would you start with d’Uccles if your goal were productive farming?

I keep both ornamental and dual-purpose poultry. Ornamental birds are just that, nice to look at and be entertained by — or even to show in competition for those interested in the “poultry fancy." My recommendations for dual-purpose (meat and eggs) are traditional breeds: the Rhode Island red and barred Plymouth rock. Both (rocks and reds) are independent on open range, forage well, produce eggs in abundance and (if you choose) will make flavorful table fare. In fact, the ALBC hosted Renewing America’s Food Traditions blind taste test, and the barred Plymouth rock was most preferred. The “commercial” Cornish rock cross was least preferred.

I simply don’t have the space to introduce you to each breed of particular merit. For specifics on traditional breeds, visit the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC). They emphasize chickens with utilitarian value to the farmer/homesteader.

If you are a traditionalist and would like to support hatcheries which maintain heritage breeds, consider obtaining and keeping those on the “critical” list and unique to North America. Some North American breeds in the critical category (fewer than 500 breeding flocks in the United States) would be buckeye, chantecler, Delaware, Holland and Java. Even if you do not start and maintain your own breeding flock, your purchase will support those who do.

After you choose the breed of interest to you, I recommend two methods of obtaining your birds.  One is to purchase day-old chicks from a nearby hatchery or via the U.S. Mail. This method ensures a certain quantity of chicks. Another method is to purchase fertile hatching eggs and incubate them.

Incubating eggs is a wonderful learning experience.  If you intend to perpetuate your own flock, owning an incubator will be a sound investment. If you incubate eggs, you don’t need to start with 25 chicks, as is the case with most mail order hatcheries. I have reviewed several tabletop incubators and posted videos demonstrating their use on my website.

If you'd like to learn more about raising chickens, check out the DVD, Regarding Chickens.

PHOTO BY FREDERICK J. DUNN

By Jenna Woginrich

If you’re the first of your friends to move to the country, get some chickens and plant an organic garden there will be some inevitable social fallout. It’s not your fault, but you’re going to raise the eyebrows of some of your more cynical friends. While there are plenty of people out there excited about self-reliance, there are just as many folks jaded by the hype and greenwashing that society has been slinging at us ever since Al Gore shared his slideshow. As green living gets trendier, it can’t help but jump the shark. You just can’t blame people for rolling their eyes when oil companies air commercials about sustainability.  

Around the time your coffee table starts to fill up with seed and hatchery catalogs you can expect the occasional jab for subscribing to the country cliché. The suspicious will cross their arms and peg you as just another converted-starry-eyed-back-to-the-lander. With an air of certainty and rib-nudging judgment, they’ll announce that at the end of all your dirty fingernails and feed sacks you’ll learn nothing that hasn’t been learned a million times before. That the merits of country living have already been printed in thousands of books, seen in endless movies, and are currently being spouted as gospel by hundreds of others just like you, probably even at the same farmers market. They’ll start doling out references from old episodes of Green Acres. There will be melting glacier jokes. You know the drill, you’ve been there. These otherwise wonderful folks will point their fingers at your western shirt and call you another sucker for the country life.

Here’s the thing. They’re right.

Of course they’re right. Agriculture isn’t exactly new to the scene, and deciding to turn your life from consumer to producer (even if it’s just a few gardens and some chickens) is a step taken by throngs before us. There is nothing new, or special, or innovative about it. The Simple Life has been experienced by humanity since the fertile crescent, was, well... fertile. The results are ridiculously cliché. If you join the coverall club you’re not going to have any experiences that many of us haven’t already had, and will continue to have indefinitely. Sorry kids, this show is always a rerun.

But you know what I say to all this? So what. I mean isn’t that the point of all this? To get your hands dirty and join the secret society of tractors and baling wire? To be able to nod your head around the campfire when other gardeners talk about blight and potato beetles, and to learn the same sense of satisfaction of growing your own food? There is comfort in knowing you’re living a cliché. It means the results of the lifestyle are so stereotypical they’re guaranteed. And while it may not be clever — it’s clear that there are a reason some clichés stick around. Some are good enough to be true. Roll your eyes all you want son. This stereotype’s got some eggs to collect.

PHOTO BY ISTOCKPHOTO/DAVID T. GOMEZ

The urban chicken movement should move to Worthington, Ohio, according to columnist Ann Fisher. Earlier this week she wrote an article for The Columbus Dispatch, discussing the city’s unfair animal ordinances. One — set in 1973 — makes it illegal to keep chickens, horses and cattle in the city within 150 feet of any residence (except for that of the animals’ owner). Another law bans animals that “create offensive odors, excessive noise or unsanitary conditions which are a menace to the health, comfort or safety of the public.” So, technically, any animal could be outlawed in Worthington. I know for sure that my dog makes a good amount of noise and never hesitates to clear out a room with a close-to-stifling stench — but I love her. And she doesn’t even provide me with breakfast in the morning. So, if my wonderful little pooch can live in confined urban quarters, I don’t know why a few hens can’t.

To discuss the urban chicken movement further, please visit our online forum and post a comment.

PHOTO BY FREDERICK J. DUNN

Today, chickens are popping up in the most unlikely and unexpected parts of the country. City chickens are no longer rare and there are chicken-friendly cities all over the United States.

If you're considering keeping poultry, check zoning and local ordinances to see what restrictions, if any, there are on owning chickens. In the suburbs, expect limitations on quantity and sex — often there are “no rooster” regulations.

Next, consider why you want chickens. There are many purebred chicken varieties and hundreds of breeds. Each chicken breed was developed for a specific purpose, and it would be wise to select the breed that best suits your purposes.

In these difficult economic times, many people will choose chickens to provide fresh eggs with some regularity. Few white egg layers out-perform the Leghorn breed. The Rhode Island red would be a very good choice for brown eggs. There are many hybrid birds available, but personally, I stick with traditional purebred stock. Spend some time researching breeds and you're certain to find a good match for you. (Check the Mother Earth News Hatchery Finder to help you find the breed you're looking for.)

Consider the availability of feed rations in your area. If you want strictly organic feeds, a visit to the local feed mill will be important. Talk to the mix master and see if the mill offers organic mixes in the quantity you need. Commercial rations are more widely available and have a longer shelf life. If you're in an urban setting where chickens are not the norm, find out where horse owners get their feed, or ask your pet store to order it in for you.

If you start with day-old chicks, a wide variety of breeds is available through the mail. All the large hatcheries offer fliers or catalogs. Look for a hatchery with a long record of healthy stock. I recommend buying day-old chicks instead of purchasing mature chickens that are ready to start laying eggs. That way, you won't have to determine if the chickens are healthy before you buy them.

You will need a place to keep your chickens. A fancy coop is not necessarily better chicken housing. In northern climates, shelter is necessary to protect birds from the weather. In all areas, shelter is necessary to protect your birds from predators. Housing needs are also determined partly by the breeds you keep. A lightweight chicken, capable of flight, will require a covered run. Heavier breeds may not be able to clear a three-foot fence. The general rule for housing is to allow 4 square feet of floor space per chicken. There are many solutions for portable chicken housing. If you're handy, constructing your own coop will result in greater comfort for you and the birds. Often you can make use of an old tool or garden shed. (For an easy, affordable option anyone can make, see the Portable Chicken Mini-coop Plan.

If you'd like to learn more about raising chickens, check out the DVD, Regarding Chickens.

PHOTO BY FREDERICK J. DUNN

Tim Posey lived in a former barracks bought surplus from the U.S. Army at Fort Bliss, Texas, and moved a few miles into the dusty, unpaved village of Anapra, New Mexico in the late 1950s. Most of Tim’s 10 acres was devoted to his business – the Posey Trailer Park. But at the center of his property, surrounded by the trailers and the sand hills, Tim Posey’s homestead teemed with life. Milk goats bleated under a shed. Chickens scratched in the shade. Miraculously, two dozen kinds of vegetables sprung in abundance from the sand behind the horse stable. Past middle-aged, heavy and stiff with arthritis, Tim spent most of his time on a kitchen chair under one or another of the awnings he had built against his barns. He watched the animals, sharpened his tools and visited with his tenants when they stopped by. I remember him in dark sunglasses. I almost never saw him indoors.

I was 9 when Mr. Posey “hired” me. I lived a quarter-mile away with my family. The livestock and the garden drew me like magnets. Once I was certain he wouldn’t chase me off, I started spending nearly every spare moment there. He asked me if I wanted to learn how to milk the goats. Then he asked me if I was willing to do it every day. He paid me in produce, eggs and goat’s milk. My dad paid me cash for the food. It was my first job, and I loved it.

There are places on the continent more barren than the Chihuahuan desert, but not many. Creosote and mesquite bushes dot the sand hills. Most of the plants have spines or thorns. We called the surrounding landscape hills, but they were more like dunes. If you leave a junked car on the downwind side of a hill there, it will disappear under the sand in a few years or a few months, depending on the weather.

Mr. Posey boarded horses. He raised chickens, guineas, milk goats and honeybees.

I don’t know how long he had been moving manure from the chicken pens and horse corrals into the vegetable garden, but he had created a marvel there. Watermelons grew huge and dark green in the tangles of vines. On the ground between the rows of corn was a kind of moist wonderland of dappled light buzzing with insects.

It’s hard to describe the emotional impact of encountering all that life in the context of our garbage-strewn village in the middle of the desert. One person had taken a small piece of land, raked out the broken glass and old bleach bottles, added manure and created a small, earthly paradise. It captured my heart.

I helped Mr. Posey mix a potent fertilizer from chicken manure and water, a slurry that could be mixed with the irrigation water he pumped into the garden. I gathered the eggs. I milked the goats. I don’t remember many sweeter moments, in my life, than walking from my home to the goat pens in the cool early morning, smelling the creosote bushes, then the goats, then the sugary aroma of cracked corn and the warm, delicious odor of new milk. Sometimes we let the goats out into the open desert where they browsed blue gramma grass, mesquite beans and acacia leaves. I loved watching them shop among the plants for those they found most appetizing. The technical term for the way a goat eats is “browsing,” and it’s a perfectly accurate description. They are like shoppers in a supermarket, and even in the desert they seemed to find plenty of goods. While the goats were out of their pen and the gate left open, the chickens and guinea hens moved in and, scratching and clucking, found a feast of their own. I could never tell exactly what they were eating. They probably found scraps of grain and alfalfa, maybe tiny insects attracted by the animals and the manure.

From the chicken pen to the garden to the watermelon; from the mesquite beans to the goat’s udder to my breakfast cereal, I became an eye-witness to an alchemy that struck me then – and strikes me now – as magical.

I thought of Tim Posey as a sort of magician, a magus whose rituals of feed, fertilizer and irrigation catalyzed mystical transformations. I wanted to learn how to practice that magic.

I can’t image life without chickens. Which is an odd thing for me to say because chickens and I aren’t exactly old friends. These animals came into my life for the first time just a few years ago, but ever since the first flock scratched outside my kitchen window — it felt like they’ve always been here. Maybe in a way they have? Not physically of course, but in this odd form of our collective American nostalgia.

You know what I mean, we see chickens everywhere. On toasters and T-shirts. On oven mitts and television programs. These yardbirds have not shied away from modern culture. Which is exactly why it both disturbs and amazes me that you can show a fourth-grade classroom a picture of a hen and they’ll all know exactly what it is. But if you ask how many of them actually have held one, or have a coop at home, the hands drop.

Why? These aren’t jungle cats! You expect a group of kids to know what a tiger is and never had held one — but chickens are the great backyard bird of everyman. One of the few kinds of livestock nearly anyone can keep cheaply and easily. So why don’t more back yards have small coops behind them? A flock of layers isn’t exactly a herd of shorthorns. Those birds take up barely any space at all, and I bet if you checked your county’s zoning codes you’ll find even in your suburb or city limits small laying flocks are allowed (roosters, for good reason, aren’t.) Heck, I bet if you listened closely, you might hear some when you walk the dog this afternoon.

As for me, ever since I collected that first egg from my own coop I was hooked. I was hooked because chickens give us so much, yet require so little. If you have ever considered a small flock of your own, stop putting it off. Seriously, these animals are low maintenance, fun, and easy for neighbors to watch when you go on vacation. All they need from us is a few scoops of feed, a fresh source of water, and some dry hay to nest in and they’re golden. That’s honestly the whole drill. If you can commit to standing in line at the same coffee shop every morning before work, you can commit to chickens. And it’s well worth it, son. From our happy birds we get these amazing eggs. Eggs that enhance everything from garden veggie quiches to butter-battered French toast. Your kitchen will sing. So will a little bit of your rural heart. It’s beating deep in there even if you work in Brooklyn (by the way New Yorkers, hens are allowed in your city) So get some hens!

There was a weird hole in time that I didn’t have chickens. It was when I was moving to Vermont from Idaho. I had to move 3,000 miles away and couldn’t bring my chickens with me. My Rocky mountain flock went home to friends and local homesteaders, so they were fine. I wasn’t.

When I arrived at my new destination in Vermont the house seemed dead without a flock of birds. Well, not dead. Comatose. I had learned to accept a clucking hen, a rooster’s crow, or a young pullet running across the driveway as the arteries of my homestead. They’d pump around the yard giving life and character to the rented freehold. Without them the farm felt lifeless, unplugged, and in need of some serious resuscitation. It took a few months until the new chicks arrived (along with a duck, turkey and some geese) but just having their brooder box in the bathroom was like one of those respirators used to revive a heart attack victim. They were an emotional shock and relief at the same time. As they milled about under the heat lamp near the sink I could almost hear “CLEAR!” and then feel the farm house’s heart start up again.

Besides the egg or stew pot, there’s another simple gift those birds give us. The simple homeland security of knowing you have a constant source of protein in the back yard. Proof positive that you’re working hard to be independent from outside food sources. There’s also the endearing responsibility and the benevolent feelings of caring for simple beings that repay us everyday. To scatter seed, repair a fence, or reline a nest box and then collect a basket of fresh eggs shows us that our work is appreciated. When was the last time you felt like that at the office?

So that’s my homage to the good hen. Birds that cost so little, require minimal care, and yet still manage to give so much. They’re both avatars of rural living and a constant form of entertainment. I guess I could survive without chickens. But when something is so logical and fun, why would I? Why should you?

Jenna Woginrich is the author of the forthcoming book, Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, from Storey Publishing. Visit her Web site at coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com.