BackYard Chickens

We are new to chicken keeping only having a small flock of hens as pets. They are hybrid hens that we got 3 years ago and this summer they seem to have suddenly become elderly. We had 6 hens that were laying 6 a day then went down to 3 then recently 1 a week. They also seemed to like to take more naps in the day time. We found 1 hen dead in the nest box one morning who had seemed fine the previous day then a month or two later our favourite hen suddenly started walking slowly and panting...

Just like the title says, what's your favorite breeds and why. Mine are.... 1. Buff Orpingtons, because they are beautiful and good all around birds, and are decent egg producers long into their lives. 2. Barnevelder, because they are quiet gentle birds with beautiful plumage, and they lay dark brown eggs. 3. Easter eggers because they are all different and those blue green eggs. They are the toy surprise of chicken breeds. 4. Wyandotte because they come in a range of colors, and I love...

I was chatting in some other threads here and the subject of growing fodder and meal worms came up. after a little research i found out its pretty easy to do both of these and i have almost everything i need on hand for start up, minus seeds and live meal worms. I'm currently drawing up plans for set ups in this venture, but i need some info from fellow chicken raisers hopefully from those who already do this. first off i have 12 birds all large fowl, and my end goal is to reduce or get...

For those who sell their eggs, how would you go about increasing your eggs value? I plan to try to do this next spring for the new market season so I'm just curious as to what other people have done or ideas they may have had. Obviously it could be a region specific solution.