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Most people start with baby chicks. You still will need a little brooder setup for them -- the traditional method is to use a heat lamp, which works fine, but there is also a huge thread on the Raising Baby Chicks part of the forum about using a heating pad instead -- you make a cozy little...

JohnB, There isn't a taste difference between different breeds or different shell colors, but the freshness of the eggs and the diet the chickens eat does make a difference. Eggs laid yesterday by healthy chickens that eat a high-quality diet are definitely better than the grocery store kind...

JohnB: I've only had chickens for about a year, and I'm sure there are more experienced people who might give you advice, but I think the three breeds you listed are good ones. Our Speckled Sussex girls are only "pretty good" layers, I think about 3-4 eggs a week from each of them. But ours...

Woodland Township, hi neighbors!

**I'm cross-posting this in hopes of finding any "takers"** Hi Jersey peeps We have rooster problems at our house and I'm hoping somebody might be able to help me out. Our baby chicks came home with us about a year ago, and turned out to contain one "surprise" speckled sussex rooster...

Hi Jersey peeps We have rooster problems at our house and I'm hoping somebody might be able to help me out. Our baby chicks came home with us about a year ago, and turned out to contain one "surprise" speckled sussex rooster. We decided to keep him and see how that worked out. He is...

Thank you, some good ideas :) for some reason it hadn't occurred to me that other people would want half of an opened bag of mealworms, but of course it makes sense that they would. I wouldn't want to put them out for wild birds in my yard, because it would be basically luring the poor birds...

I guess they're just weird. I have 9 birds, age around 10-11 months. I bought a bag of dried mealworms when they were pullets and they would never eat them. Recently I decided to try again and bought some more. Nope, zero interest. My beagle ended up "vacuuming" them up off the ground after...

I'm in NJ, same as the OP. Officially I know it is illegal to be shooting at raptors, but we've spoken to people from the state Fish & Wildlife and "off the books" they will tell you that if something is on your property attacking your animals, to do what's necessary to protect your own. I'm...

I guess my older son would fall into the category of high-functioning autism now that the DSM V did away with Aspergers. He is 13, which has been a pretty harrowing age so far. He doesn't do the teeth grinding, but he used to chew on things a lot... he destroyed a lot of shirts by chewing the...

Hi, my kids don't struggle with the medical issues that many of y'all's do, and I hope you won't think I'm minimizing those by posting here. I have two sons, and I'm very grateful for their robust physical health. Their special needs are of a mental/behavioral health kind. My older son has...

We feed our chickens all sorts of scraps & waste from our own kitchen, and I guess I don't see restaurant leftovers as all that different. I think I would give mine nearly anything that wasn't spoiled. I would be uncomfortable with meats, dairy etc if it had spent hours at room temperature...

It seems to vary tremendously how much feed they eat. We have 8 hens and a rooster. I bought 100 lbs of feed exactly a month ago and they have eaten maybe a third of that so far. They are heritage breeds, free range all day, and get lots of scraps and treats (most spoiled birds ever. They...

It's surely possible, but we don't have problems with wheat in our family so I haven't actually researched it. You might start asking at a local (locally owned) feed store near you, or maybe a co-op or something. Maybe they would know of somebody that could help you. The person I get feed...

This may not matter to you, but it was a factor for me in choosing feeds. The majority of chicken feeds are mainly corn and soybeans. This includes the Natures Best. Even if they are organic corn and soy, I'm not thrilled with those ingredients as the mainstay of their diet (and ultimately...

Yikes, now you're just trying to scare us If I ever found one of these dudes in my nest boxes, I'm not sure if I would ever get over it.

Yay!! Congratulations It's so much fun. We now have 4 little pullet eggs in a saucer on the kitchen counter. We can't seem to bring ourselves to eat them, we just sort of wander by and admire them. My younger son is talking about preserving/saving them in some way, any ideas on that?

Yeah I think that's about right. They probably thought they'd hit the jackpot. Yes, we're smack in the middle of the pine barrens, in the very lowest population density area of NJ. We love it here. When I was telling the park services guy about the snake, I said 5 feet long and he...

We discovered a roughly 5 foot long snake in our yard today -- or actually, our chickens discovered it and were following the thing. Our flock seems to be worryingly adventurous. We believe it was a pine snake. My husband got a long stick and sort of harassed it out of our yard and into the...

Congratulations! We got our first egg on Friday and another one yesterday. It's really exciting to find it.