Predators

Chickens are such important critters in our lives. Whether you live in rural, urban or suburban Australia the greatest threat facing your flock are predators. It’s up to you to protect your chickens and it all starts with the physical chicken coop security. But who are the predators? Snakes, goannas, quolls, hawks and eagles are…

Chook Poo

Chickens give us a host of useful services and it’s clear the more we care for our chickens, the more services they happily provide! One of their endless gifts is chook poo. A single chook produces about 1kg of manure each week. We can make very good use of that! Keeping backyard chickens and growing…

Raising Backyard Chickens

With Spring in the air our chooks turn broody. If you are raising backyard chickens then a broody hen is nature’s best incubator. Getting Started To get started, select 6-12 fertile eggs depending on the size of the broody hen. Eggs can be stored up to 7 days after lay, before you start incubating them,…

Feeding Your Flock

Chickens are omnivores like pigs, so they like a diet that includes protein from various sources. Chooks are not herbivores like cows, sheep or goats and so your flock can, and should, eat plant as well as animal proteins. Here are some tips on looking after our chooks well – the do’s and don’ts around…

Spring Clean Your Coop

Spring is in the air and with it comes warmer weather, a time when mites are most active and can harm our chooks. So now is the time to Spring clean your coop. Leg Mites The scaly leg mite burrows under the scales of a chook’s leg and feeds on keratin. It exudes a greyish…

New Girls in the Hen House

  With Spring just around the corner you might be thinking about introducing some new chooks to your flock. New girls in the hen house can cause quite a disruption to an established flock. It can also be a scary, dangerous business for the newcomers unless managed well.   Chickens need a pecking order, a…

Diatomaceous Earth – chicken mites treatment & many other uses

Diatomaceous Earth – chicken mites treatment & many other uses! 🐥Chicken mites treatment 🐥Chicken lice treatment 🐥Contains high levels of natural soluble silica 🐥Improves egg production 🐥Larger birds – stronger and healthier 🐥Contains many trace minerals Pronounced die-uh-tuh-MEY-shus and frequently shortened to ‘DE’, diatomaceous earth is a truly remarkable mineral-based substance made from the fossilised…

Extreme Cold & Winter chicken care

There are a few things that we can do over the Autumn molt period and into the cold Winter weather to look after our backyard chooks well.   Winter in the ‘Chookouse’ Ventilation in the chook house is essential for your flock throughout the whole year including Winter, so don’t be tempted to block up…

Take Pleasure in your Chooks

Add up all the world’s cats and dogs, cows and pigs and there would still be more chickens. Toss in every rat on earth and the chook still rules. More than 20 billion chickens live on our planet, three for every human alive. Keeping backyard chickens is rapidly expanding across Australia. Chooks are popping up…

Deep Litter Method

With Winter approaching and our days getting cooler it is the perfect time to set up a ‘Deep Litter System’ in our coops. Cheryl Nelson from Natural Chicken Health – Super Mash shows you how to create this happy environment. Deep litter in a chicken coop develops its own biome (bacterial culture), which acts to reduce insect…