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When Ordering Chicks, How Many Are Enough?

Baby Chicks

Deciding how many chicks to order can be challenging. Often the determining factor comes down to how many you want, versus how many you need, versus how many your local regulations allow you to have.   When starting a laying flock, decide how many eggs you want and size your flock accordingly. As a rough […]

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10 Features Laying Hens Look for in a Perfect Nesting Box

Nest Box

Furnishing the type of environment your laying hens seek when they are ready to lay an egg will ensure they lay in the location of your choice. With proper nest boxes, eggs will be laid where you can easily find them, and where they will remain clean and unbroken. Here are ten features hens look […]

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When is Chick Season®?

Chick Season baby chicken

Chick season® for most birds is in the spring. Poultry, like other birds, gear up for laying eggs and hatching them as the days start growing longer in spring. Also like other birds, most poultry are seasonal breeders.   The length of the breeding season depends largely on the type of poultry. Chickens and other […]

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Selecting the Best Chicken Egg Incubator

baby chicks in Incubator

Sooner or later nearly every poultry keeper will want to try hatching eggs in a mechanical device known as an incubator. With the huge number of different egg incubators now available, selecting a model can be daunting. In choosing the best model to fit your needs, consider each of these features:     Price First […]

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How Long After Mating Does a Hen Lay Fertile Eggs?

Rooster Fertility

When a rooster mates a hen, his injected semen is stored in numerous sperm storage tubules (SSTs) located in the area where the hen’s uterus joins the vagina. That is, provided the hen likes the rooster. If she doesn’t, she can squirt out the semen to avoid hatching his offspring. Assuming the hen approves of […]

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What Are Chick Days?

Chick Days

Chick Days occur during a brief period in spring when local feed, farm and home stores offer baby chicks — and sometimes ducklings, turkey poults and guinea keets — for sale. Nearly all stores have chicks around Easter time. With the ever-increasing popularity of chicken keeping, some stores start Chick Days in early February and […]

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Why Does a Chicken Lose Feathers?

Chickens lose feathers for any number of reasons, some of which are seasonal, while others can occur at any time of year. Here are the most common reasons chickens and other poultry lose feathers and what you can do to help your feathered friends remain feathered.   Feather Picking Feather picking is most likely to […]

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Raising Cornish Cross Hens? Try This Delicious Recipe at Home!

Roasted Chicken

Raising a flock of chickens to put food on the table for you and your family? If so, the Cornish Cross is an excellent breed to consider as it will provide you with more than enough meat to make some delicious meals. Give this herb-stuffed roasted chicken recipe a try with your Cornish Cross hens. […]

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Watch a Mother Hen Enjoy a Meal With Her New Chicks [Video]

Hen With Chicks

In honor of Mother’s Day, we’d like to take a moment to appreciate the remarkable maternal instincts of mother hens. Although some hens tend to make better mothers than others—Silkies and Orpingtons are widely-regarded as some of the best breeds for hatching—all hens have natural maternal instincts that kick in as soon as their chicks […]

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