Guides for Raising Healthy Chickens Anywhere
New to chicken keeping? This is where your journey begins. Find beginner-friendly guides on choosing breeds, flock size, local laws, and everything you need to raise chickens with confidence.
The ISA Brown chicken is the most prolific brown egg layer on the planet. Developed in France in 1978 by the Institut de Sélection Animale (that is what ISA stands for), this hybrid hen produces 300 to 350 large brown eggs per year in her first laying cycle, starts laying as early as 16 to 20 weeks of age, and has a … Read more
The Rhode Island Red vs Buff Orpington comparison comes down to what you actually need from your flock. Rhode Island Reds lay more eggs, with production strains reaching 250 to 300 per year, and they are more independent, better foragers, and more heat tolerant. Buff Orpingtons are friendlier, better with children, heavier for meat at 8 to 10 lbs, and more cold … Read more
The Naked Neck chicken is one of the most misunderstood breeds in the poultry world. Also called the Turken, Transylvanian Naked Neck, or Churkey, this dual-purpose heritage breed is famous for its completely featherless neck. That bare neck is caused by a single incompletely dominant gene (Na) on Chromosome 3 that also reduces total body feathering by roughly 40 to 50 percent. Despite persistent … Read more
The Welsummer is a Dutch dual-purpose heritage breed prized for its strikingly beautiful dark brown speckled eggs, terracotta shells frecked with darker spots that make every single egg look hand-painted. No two Welsummer eggs are alike. The Welsummer (sometimes spelled Welsumer in Europe) is named after the village of Welsum in the Gelderland province of the eastern Netherlands. According to My … Read more
The Salmon Faverolles (always spelled with the “S,” pronounced FAV-er-ol with a silent S) is a French heritage dual-purpose breed famous for three things: an irresistibly comedic personality that earns them the nickname “barnyard comedians,” stunning color differences between hens and roosters, and reliable winter egg production of 180 to 200 tinted cream-to-pink eggs per year. You will see this breed spelled both … Read more
The Marans (always spelled with the “S,” pronounced mah-RAHN in French or mah-RANZ by most Americans) is a dual-purpose French heritage breed famous for laying the darkest chocolate-brown eggs of any chicken in the world. These eggs are so unique they are graded on their own breed-specific color scale from 1 to 9. You will see this breed spelled both “Marans” and “Maran” … Read more
Roosters crow in the morning because their internal circadian clock tells them to, not because they see the sunrise. A landmark study published in Current Biology by researchers Tsuyoshi Shimmura and Takashi Yoshimura at Nagoya University proved that roosters kept in total darkness continued crowing on an approximately 23.7-hour cycle at what they “believed” to be dawn. But there is a … Read more
The key to holding a chicken without getting scratched is to control three things at once: pin the wings against the body so they cannot flap, support the feet so the chicken feels secure and stops kicking, and keep the bird close to your body so it stays calm. I still remember the deep claw marks down … Read more
The Sapphire Gem is a sex-linked hybrid chicken, not an APA-recognized breed, developed in the Czech Republic by crossing a Blue Plymouth Rock with a Barred Plymouth Rock. It is prized for its stunning blue-lavender plumage and exceptional egg production of 260 to 290 large brown eggs per year. I added two Sapphire Gem hens to my flock two years … Read more
When I ordered Jersey Giant chicks, I genuinely expected a chicken the size of a small turkey. The breed is literally called “Giant.” Every website said “the largest purebred chicken in America.” I pictured a bird that would tower over my Orpingtons and make my Australorps look like bantams. Eighteen months later, my fully grown Jersey Giant rooster stands maybe 2 … Read more