In normal circumstances I welcome broody chickens with open arms (although given the manner of some of my broodies I mean that metaphorically as you would be lucky to get anywhere near them!) However during the late summer months, and in particular during July and August, it can be a real problem if you find …
Chicken Nugget – Eclipse Plumage
In wild forms of the chicken such as the Red Jungle Fowl a moult can occur in two stages effectively giving the impression of two moults. It is particularly evident in the males. Firstly they will moult their brightly coloured body and head feathers replacing them with more subdued tones more akin to the females. …
A brief interlude….
I write, in fact looking back over the decade of magazine, newspaper and book contributions I seem to write quite a bit. I’m not sure quite how many words I’ve written but each piece always seems to be a relatively short or succinct journey. Even the book I was involved with last year was broken …
Free Chicken Keeping Online Booklet
If you subscribe to this blog, follow me on twitter or have bumped into me when I'm out and about then you might know I write for the poultry press & magazines. It was one of the magazines, namely Your Chickens, that approached me recently about working with them to put together a mini pocket …
Wing clipping in chickens
I often get asked about how and when to clip the wings of chickens. I usually answer with a question... "why do you want to clip your chickens wings". Its not a requirement to clip their wings and only really needs doing if you have a bird or birds that persistently clear boundaries and head …
Moulting… aka getting oven ready
Late summer, early autumn sees the onset of the annual moult for chickens. If you are a first time keeper this can appear rather alarming when first encountered especially in some breeds who seem to literally drop all their feathers overnight. This dramatic transformation into an oven ready bird can send the uninitiated keeper into …
ChickenStreet 