Every page on this site
Grouped by stage, in the order a first flock hits them. There are 106 pages in total.
Home
Stage 0 — deciding and planning
Start Here8 pages
- Chicken starter kits, and the kit we would build instead
- What it costs to start, and what it costs every month after
- How many chickens to start with
- Raising chicks week by week, with the numbers for each week
- The mistakes that cost you money, and the two that cost you birds
- The best chickens for beginners, using figures somebody actually published
- The best egg-laying breeds, ranked on the bottom of the published range
- How long you can leave chickens, and the number that actually decides it
Optional stage — the 21 days before the brooder
Hatching6 pages
- The best egg incubators for beginners, ranked on what the makers publish
- Automatic egg turners, and what each machine actually does
- What it actually costs to run an egg incubator
- Hatching day by day: what happens, and what you do, across 21 days
- Nurture Right 360 review: what the maker actually publishes
- Candling eggs: the spider, the blood ring, and the air cell nobody reads
Stage 1 — weeks 0 to 6
Brooder10 pages
- The best brooder heat plates, compared on what the makers publish
- Heat plate against heat lamp: the arithmetic, and the exception
- Chick starter feed, compared on the guaranteed analysis
- Medicated or unmedicated chick feed: one question decides it
- Chick feeders and waterers, and the one change that fixes both
- Brooder thermometers, and the specification most of them do not publish
- Brooder temperature by week
- Setting up a brooder before the chicks arrive
- When chicks can go outside, and how to move them
- Chick grit: the one rule, and the two start ages
Stage 2 — weeks 4 to 8
Coop26 pages
- The best chicken coops for beginners, with the capacity claims checked
- Coops for four chickens, sized against the published figures
- Coops for six chickens, and why almost none of them are
- Automatic coop doors, ranked on what the makers publish
- Run-Chicken T50 against Omlet Smart against ChickenGuard Pro
- Coop bedding, judged on moisture and ammonia
- Coop size per chicken: the numbers, and how to check a coop against them
- Predator-proofing: one material, one apron, and one legal fact
- Ventilation is not draft, and the difference is what causes frostbite
- Coops for three chickens, the one flock size the market actually serves
- Coops for five chickens, the flock size nothing is built for
- Coops for eight chickens, where the flat-pack market runs out
- Coops for ten chickens, and the coop that is sold for exactly ten
- The best chicken coops for winter, ranked on ventilation rather than insulation
- Walk-in chicken coops, and the door height nobody checks
- The deep litter method, and the one number that decides whether it works
- The best chicken runs, ranked on the only figure their makers publish
- Run-Chicken T50 review: the door, read against its own manual
- Electric poultry netting, and how to size the energizer
- Roosting bars, and the figure nobody prints on the box
- Omlet Eglu Cube review: the six-hen claim, checked
- Chicken tractors, measured against the published allowance
- How to clean a chicken coop, in the published order
- Turning a shed into a chicken coop, in five published numbers
- Keeping hawks off your chickens: cover the run, because nothing else is published
- Keeping chickens out of the garden, and what clipping a wing really buys
Stage 3 — from the move outside, onward
Feeding12 pages
- Chicken feeders, judged on waste and what else eats from them
- Treadle feeders: the mechanism, the training, and the bantam problem
- Chicken waterers, and the design that stops them fouling
- Heated chicken waterers, with the winter electricity cost computed
- Feed storage, and why the seal matters more than the lid
- Layer, starter, all-flock and scratch: what actually separates them
- Grit and oyster shell: two different products, two different jobs
- Stopping chicken water freezing, including the things that do not work
- Grandpa's Feeder review: the capacity claim, checked
- Layer feed, ranked on what is actually printed on the tag
- Chicken treats, and the arithmetic of the 10 percent rule
- Chickens and ducks together: the feed, the water, and the species that cannot join
Stage 4 — week 16 and up
Laying11 pages
- Nesting boxes, and the ratio that decides how many you buy
- Roll-out nest boxes: what a sloped floor actually fixes
- Nest box pads, and why loose bedding does not stay in a nest
- Nesting box dimensions, and the three numbers that matter
- When chickens start laying, and the signs it is about to happen
- Handling and storing your own eggs
- How to stop chickens eating eggs, using the published figures
- Chicken molting, and the feed change the published numbers actually support
- The broody hen, and the published method for breaking one
- Why your chickens stopped laying, in the order worth checking
- Chicken leg bands, and the sizing rule nobody prints
All stages — the cross-cutting one
Health16 pages
- A chicken first aid kit, and where it stops being enough
- Coop heaters, and the case against buying one
- Mites and lice: confirming them, then treating by the label
- Diatomaceous earth: what the label says, and what it does not
- The dust bath: the cheapest parasite prevention there is
- Keeping chickens through winter, in order of what actually works
- Backyard chickens and rats: it is a feed problem
- Flies in the chicken coop, and the published reason traps do not fix it
- Keeping chickens cool, in the order the extension services put it
- Electrolytes for chickens, on the published analyses
- Chicken saddles, and the problem they do not fix
- Chicken toys, and what the published guidance actually recommends
- Bumblefoot, graded the way the publication grades it
- Crop problems, and the three things people call sour crop
- Apple cider vinegar for chickens, and the number that decides it
- The egg-bound hen, and the word that is doing two jobs
How this site works
Trust and utility