Reviews by Shadrach

This is what I got taught to do here in Spain. It's considered more reliable then comb colour etc once you've had a bit of practice.
Very easy to when the chicken is roosting at night I've found.

I'm considering something like this in the event I get an Asil pair. Initially I had a fixed coop and run in mind but this article has made me think on.

Good clear article. I've partially failed at this before. The young chap still ended up with a bit of a limp. Something like this might have worked better.

I won't bang on about my distaste for the bin chick industry. Great article pointing out some of the problems.
I have never seen one of the mentioned chicken and chick charts. Can you actually tell what's in the bin from the pictures?

I like the idea of a mobile coop. Good article.

What I like about this coop is being able to strip the coop out for cleaning and parasite control. Not having to work around stuff makes such a difference.
The run is still a bit small and some 'toys' would make it more entertaining for the chickens.
If I have a criticism it's the font size; next size up would be much better.

I'm laughing at myself as I type this. I'm completely against the idea of taking chickens for a walk on a lead.
Please add even just one picture of taking a chicken for a walk on a lead. It's something in life I have never seen.
However, it seems people do and this article explains very neatly with some great pictures (lovely looking hen) how to fit the harness. It's a very good article and I would suggest entering it into the current article contest. It's unique!
Could you please add the price of this to the article and get busy writing an article on how you train your chickens to walk on a lead.

I've never been too sure about what I think about probiotics. I've tended to believe that given adequate quality forage chickens guts remain healthy through what they select.
I might try a couple of these recipes.

I don't think this problem has even crossed my mind.
I don't use a tractor but many others do.

I would have liked this more if some tests had been carried out to determine at what temperature the water freezes.

Nice to read a success story.

Great article. Nothing more to add.

I really like this article mainly because it aligns with my view of chicken keeping. However, for a great many chicken keepers who do not have favorable conditions for free ranging a lot of this advice is not going to be practicable.
For example, I think having natural ground under the chickens feet is really important. It allows for natural pecking behaviour with reward (natural ground will contain some bugs) and is good for their feet when scratching. In a run, it can be a nightmare if you add a few inches of rain or snow.
While the idea of culling sick chickens is sensible, once again, many people are just not capable of killing their much loved pet and it is very difficult to reason that keeping them alive through administering drugs and intensive care may put the chicken through more suffering.
Here, where I live, lots of people keep chickens and have for many generations. The knowledge regarding chickens is staggering and varied and none comes from reading Internet sites.

I liked the article but the subject is so vast that it might be more informative to tackle one problem per article.
I'm not a believer in the separation advice that seems to be given no matter what the complaint is.
In many circumstances the stress on the chicken being separated from the flock does more harm than good.

This would be me. I never considered keeping them and found a few pieces of useful information in this article.
I would have liked some extended details on how to house them, although the links provided extended reading that covers this.

This is great information. Could this not be packed in a zip file and uploaded to a file hosting site?
Is the author interested in expanding this for vitamins outside the USA?

I'm still prone to making a bit of a mess of this. This article I found easy to follow. Great pics and method.

This is an important topic. The death of a chicken, pet or not can come as a major shock. Sometimes one doesn't realise the attachment made until the creature dies.
I would have liked to read something about dealing with with the death of a chicken that the keeper has killed.
I would also liked the author to deal with the disposal of the body. Something i struggle with is if the chicken was healthy, should I eat it.

Great idea.

There are a couple of things I particularly liked about this article.
The author draws a distinction between hatchery stock and their shortcomings and goes at least part of the way to point out that good breeding stock may require considerable effort to locate.
There are many more breeds that don't even feature in the official breed catalogs that make excellent choices, particularly for those who are looking for chickens more as pets than egg or meat producers.
Many of these lesser known breeds have had minimal human interference and live longer and healthier lives for it.