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I like to brood where ever the chicks are going to be living. I've brooded in a coop and a tractor that I've used as a grow-out pen. As long as they have something for a draft shield when they're really young, I can adjust the height of the lamp to get whatever temperature I need. Later, they...

I've got one raised bed like that, next to the house. It has the things I use most often in it. I usually have an assortment of salad greens and chard in it, along with a few herbs, plus radishes in cool weather. It's quick to run out there and grab some things for a meal. The main garden is...

We have heavy clay here and I lived in Texas for several years, too. I had to get used to different gardening seasons and the hot summers that were so dry. The humidity with the heat can be horrible here, but we get so much rain that the gardens are usually lush. Organic matter is good for...

My great grandmother had fake eggs that were white glass. They looked just like a real egg, but were colder to the touch.

Quote: I'd keep them locked up for a week, to try to retrain them to lay in the nests again. It might take longer or more than one session. Try keeping some fake eggs in the nests all the time, too. Or at least a couple of the nests. They should be coming back to the coop to lay, even when...

At least you won't have a hard time catching them, when you need to.

Tallulah Chicklet, my guess would be that as the days get longer and spring gets closer, she'll start laying again. By then, she should have acclimated more to being at your place and have less stress, too. Free range can be deadly in some circumstances, but it gave her more nutrients than a...

Quote: The difference is in how much a particular chicken eats, to put on the same amount of weight or how many eggs you get, for the same amount of feed. It varies a lot more than you would think, when you first get into chickens. It's about a difference in money or feed resources, whether...

I gather at the end of the day, to get the eggs laid during the day. I also gather when I'm out there doing something else, for the eggs laid earlier in the day. The times when I gather most frequently are in really hot weather and really cold weather. Hot temperatures degrade eggs faster and...

I think all of mine have been pretty good foragers. I've had a lot of different breeds, but mostly heavy weight breeds the last 20 years. They range all over and will cover 5 acres, depending on which gates are open. Mine seem to forage farther, sooner, if they have someone or something to...

I like deep litter in a coop and I prefer wood shavings. I had single nest boxes for many years and used straw in them most of the time. Now that I don't have straw around for livestock, I've gone to just using shavings. The chickens don't seem to care much, either way. I few years ago I...

I qualify as an old timer, as defined for this thread. I'll take a shot at describing my background with chickens and a couple of other things that are related. I've been around chickens since the 50s and quite a few of my family members have had chickens. Some were farmers and some weren't...

Sometimes what works for smaller goats is not a smaller door, but a tunnel with a bend in it. Make a sharp turn in it. They can get through a small door by crawling through on their bellies, but can't make as short a turn as a chicken, because they have longer bodies. The tunnel needs to be...

Quote: You also aren't sending it "to freezer camp". I don't know why, but that phrase irritates me. You're butchering or processing your chicken. Period. It might sound nicer, but you're still killing the bird, plucking and gutting it and putting it in the freezer. Never heard freezer camp...

That's heartbreaking, to lose years of work like that.