Critter Geek

Volume 13 of MAKE Magazine has hit the newstands, and it includes an article I wrote about raising backyard laying hens, Backyard Hens…that link takes you directly to the article in the MAKE Digital Edition - read it online!

Here’s some additional resources and links to supplement the article.

Equipment and Supplies (including coops)

California Wine Country Chicken Chat - and extremely helpful and lively online community of North Bay Area chicken enthusiasts. Highly recommended!

Easy Hen Nesting Boxes - a clever use of cat litter buckets as nest boxes for your layers.

McMurray Hatchery - large online retailer of chicks and all sorts of chicken supplies. I’ve heard generally good things about them. When you order chicks, you have an option to receive a free “rare” breed mystery chick along with your others. The minimum order for chicks is 25, but consider pooling an order with friends or selling your extras locally. They sell the Chick-N-Hutch system that I use to house our hens.

My Pet Chicken - a supplier of all sorts of backyard chickens and chicken supplies, catering to those who keep a small number of chickens as pets. They sell a number of high-end chicken coops and supplies, and will ship as few as three chicks (though the shipping will cost…it’s expensive to send smaller quantities of chicks because it’s more difficult to keep them warm).

Mother’s Mini-coop - plans and how-to for a beautiful backyard chicken coop that can be moved around to provide more foraging opportunities for your chickens.

BackyardChickens.com - great resource site for raising small numbers of chickens, especially for urban farmers. Includes active discussion forums that could be very helpful.

Portable Chicken Mini-coop Plan - describes how to make a very easy movable chicken coop to house two or three hens.

Keeping Chickens In Your Back Yard - a weblog full of interesting posts about keeping chickens. Check out the gallery of subscriber chicken coops in the right column!

Breeds of Chicken - good site for finding photos and illustrations of different breeds.

Ware Manufacturing Hutches and Pens - I wanted to save time and effort, so I purchased a Chick-N-Hutch and Chick-N-Rabbit Pen like the ones shown here. I’ve been generally happy with them; the best prices I’ve found have been locally at Western Farm Center in Santa Rosa. JP at Western Farm is especially knowledgeable and helpful about raising backyard chickens.

Backyard Chickens on Squidoo - good collection of basic info and resources, including why your chickens will need a calcium suppliement like ground oyster shells and a source of grit.

Reference Books and Magazines

Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens: Care / Feeding / Facilities - probably the bible of raising your own chickens. More information than you need to get started, but a great reference to browse and own.

Backyard Poultry Magazine - the name says it all. They have an online library full of helpful articles.

Living with Chickens: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Backyard Flock - I haven’t read this myself, but it gets good reviews and would probably be helpful.

Building Chicken Coops - a “Storey Country Wisdom” pamphlet all about housing for your chickens.

Barnyard in Your Backyard - “A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cows”

Inspiration

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan’s book has inspired many, including me, to take a closer look at where their food comes from and even start growing their own. His new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, sounds like another interesting read.

Polyface Farms - web site for Joel Salatin’s “beyond organic” farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Salatin’s farm was described in detail in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Meet Real Free-Range Eggs - Mother Earth News organized an egg testing to compare nutritional values for pastured vs. factory eggs. The results are impressive…pastured eggs had less cholesterol and saturated fat, and more vitamins and nutrients.

The Natural History of the Chicken - This PBS documentary is really about people who have chickens in their lives. It’s a series of fun and quirky vignettes…watch it for fun! It’s also available on YouTube — here’s Part 1.

I hope you find these resources helpful — let me know in the comments if you have more helpful links, and I can add them to this page.

I’ll leave you with a slide show of photos of my own chicken-raising experiences, and a couple of low-res videos:

Chicks in their cardboard box brooder

Chickens in the back yard (calling them back to their coop)