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This year, my daughter and I have made a real effort to hatch out more chicks (as well as bringing in some outside chicks) to really step up in our breeding efforts, so that we can grow out enough to be able to be extremely particular about what we keep. What I have learned from this is that...

It seems to me that the Breeds, Genetics, and Showing forum - wonderful as it is - is highly dominated by the breed threads. Threads that appear about the "how-to" of going to shows, or some of the logistics and getting started in showing, end up buried and hard to find, and it seems there are a...

It had been my understanding that the ABA and APA standards of perfection were similar in terms of the actual standard My daughter is showing Bantam Sussex and this week realized her confusion about the standard weight was come by honestly: APA 2010: Cock 36 oz Cockerel 32 oz Hen 32 oz...

I've had a couple of people tell me that for optimum feather quality that the birds should be in coops without wire. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how this is accomplished. To me, ventilation is very important... as is some natural light and keeping out pests. I'm somewhat at a loss as to how to...

This is the time of year when people come out and start asking a lot of questions related to 4H. Since I so clearly remember being a newbie mom, I try to help a little when I can, but those threads tend to scroll away and get lost fairly quickly. I suspect there are a lot of people thinking...

I suddenly realized that to enter my daughter's chickens in the fair, we need to know band numbers, and we don't have any standard (ie not bantam) sized bands around. Our local feed store is out. I have to run through Marin and Sonoma counties tomorrow, and I was wondering if there are any...

I was visiting a friend who has had great success ridding her pastures of mustard by putting her chicken tractor over it. This has me thinking about Yellow Starthistle, which is a nasty weed that is toxic to horses (but palatable to goats and sheep). I have not been able to find any information...

I found some old, rusty cages in what we colloquially call the "supply depot". Other than hosing them down, any thoughts on what I might do to clean them up? Should I consider some sort of spray to attack the rust? There's still plenty of metal to keep them sound, just a few dents here and there.

I had a chance to read a new novel, The Sweetheart of Prosper County, about a teen girl who decides to join FFA and show a chicken at the county fair. She ends up with a bantam black rosecomb rooster, and finding a new group of good friends in FFA. It's a lovely novel and well worth reading. I...

We've kept ducks for a while, and one thing that has always impressed me is that no matter how much time they spend in the water, they never appear wet. I noticed that yesterday, my ducks were wet, particularly on the backs of their necks. As in, the individual feathers were obviously holding...

Right now coops are divided into small, medium, and large, but I think it would be useful to have another section of fancy chicken coops, the ones that look like playhouses and the like. I would quite like to be able to direct people who are thinking about chickens in the suburbs directly to...