Frequently Asked Questions

A chicken coop is any structure in which your chickens shelter. In most areas of the country, a chicken coop is an enclosed space, but in warmer areas many people use a three sided coop to make sure it doesn't get too hot inside (the last side of the coop is usually secured with something like welded wire hardware cloth). A coop can be made of plastic, wood, metal or fiberglass. It can be made of recycled pallets, or it can be a re-purposed playhouse. It can be built by hand or purchased. Chicken coops usually contain nests for laying...

If you're longing to keep pet chickens, sometimes it's hard to even know where to begin your exciting chicken adventure. We're happy to help you get started with some helpful resources! First you might be interested in our glossary, just in case you're not familiar with common chicken terms. That glossary will help you as you read through the other resources we have for you. For instance, we have two free ebooks online, one on Chicken and Chick Care that is essential, and one on hatching eggs at home, that you'll want to read through if you plan to hatch...

Birdseed mixes are usually too high in fat and too low in vitamins (especially when the mixes are high in millet and cracked corn) to meet the long-term nutritional needs of a laying flock. They're also way too low in calcium. Remember, modern domestic chickens lay lots of eggs year-round, while wild birds may lay only a few eggs a year, seasonally. So seed mixes designed for wild birds just won't make a good, well-balanced diet for your flock. Still, as an occasional treat, your chickens will love it! And many seeds are high in SOME vitamins and amino acids...

Are you going to need to refill your chicken waterer once a day... or once a week? You might be wanting to plan ahead for what size waterer you'll need for your new backyard flock. If you're thinking about this already, good for you! You'll be much happier if you've thought everything through and planned everything out, first. To choose the right waterer for you, it can be helpful to have a rough idea about how much your birds will drink. That said, many things will affect how much your flock will drink: larger birds will drink more. Birds not...

Introducing new hens to an established flock can be tricky (see how to do that in the related questions below)---but luckily it's much easier to introduce chicks to chicks than it is adult chickens to adult chickens! This is because the drive to establish a pecking order doesn't start for a few weeks in baby chicks--usually not until they're 6 or more weeks old. Make sure you're getting chicks from an NPIP source like My Pet Chicken. If you're concerned about communicable illness due to either the source of the chicks or environmental factors (such as exposure en route), consider...

If the hen you need to handle runs from you every time you get near, what do you do--chase her around the yard and see who gets tired first? Well, you can try. But we don't recommend it. Your chickens can fly out of reach, after all. Then what are you going to do? Plus, there's just a much easier way. The easiest way to pick up a chicken who doesn't normally allow herself to be picked up is to simply wait until she settles down at night, and pick her up off the roost while she's sleeping. You'll want...

Sometimes people get the idea to keep an indoor pet chicken, or a "house chicken." It's not a good idea to keep them permanently indoors, though. Chickens are happiest when they have access to the outside. While we do sell chicken diapers, those are really meant to give you a way to keep your chicken temporarily inside. You may need to keep your chicken inside temporarily if you have someone who is injured and needs time to recover. But you don't want to keep chickens inside the house permanently; indoor pet chickens are just a bad idea. Firstly, it will...

Yes, you CAN mix your feed at home. But that said, it's not very easy or inexpensive, as people who ask this question often seem to assume. For most people with small backyard flocks, purchasing a balanced base feed is much, much easier than buying 5 or 10 separate ingredients in bulk quantities of hundreds of pounds and blending them yourself. Do you have space to store all that safely? Will you use it up before it spoils? Do you want to spend a bunch of time mixing feeds? For most people, the answer is no. It's also a big...