Short answer first: feed starter from hatch to about 8 weeks, grower from 8 weeks to 18 weeks, and layer feed only once your hens are laying, or right at 18 weeks if the first egg is clearly days away.…
Here is the number worth knowing before you buy anything: a laying hen eats about a quarter of a pound of feed a day. But with an open pan or trough feeder, a real share of that feed never reaches…
Short answer first: plan on about 1 square foot of vent opening for every hen, placed high on the coop walls, above the roosts, and leave it open all year. Chickens shrug off dry cold that would send most of…
Short answer first: raising backyard chickens costs roughly $800 to $1,200 in the first year for a typical flock of 6 hens set up sensibly, and then about $30 to $45 a month after that. In the worked example our…
An automatic coop door is not really about the door. It is about the mornings you get to stay in bed, the weekends you get to go away, and the evenings you are stuck in traffic while the light fades…
Every chicken keeper learns the same lesson the same way: on their knees, in the mud, reaching into a low coop for a feeder that has tipped over again. A walk-in coop ends that. You open a door, step inside…
Six hens is the flock size almost everybody starts with, so “6 chicken coop” is the label almost every manufacturer wants on the box. Here is the problem: by the standard rule of 4 square feet of coop floor per…
Short answer first: when hens stop laying, it is almost never some mystery disease. In most cases it is one of three completely normal things — the days have got too short, they are molting, or they are getting older…
Short answer first: put your chicken coop on high, dry ground that catches the morning sun and gets afternoon shade, close enough to your house that winter chores stay easy, but far enough away that summer smells never reach the…
Short answer first: for most households, the right answer is 4 to 6 hens — and whatever number you land on, never start with fewer than 3. Chickens are flock animals. One hen on her own is a miserable hen,…
