The Coop Scoop
Giving you the dirt on all things raising chickens, gardening, composting, and living sustainably!
Bouncing Egg Experiment
Engage students with an exciting chemistry lesson that connects class chickens with laboratory science. Egg membranes can be difficult to see, even when viewing a chicken egg raw vs. hardboiled. This experiment use common household items to magically disintegrate the hard, calcium carbonate eggshell to reveal an elastic membrane of an egg.
What to Look for When Purchasing Healthy Chickens
Not all stores let you pick out your own chicks, but if you are lucky enough to be in a position to pick out what chicks/adult chickens you want to buy, these are things you want to look for to make sure you are purchasing a healthy chicken.
Sourcing Chickens: Where to find and buy chickens
Learn 6 places to buy or source chickens for free to start your backyard flock or expand your farm!
Make a DIY Solitary Bee House
How to Make a DIY Solitary Bee HouseMarch 1, 2024 | Molly SuttonLet's help pollinators by making bee houses! According to the USDA, “Some scientists estimate that one out of every three bites of food we eat exists because of animal pollinators like bees, butterflies...
How Your Coops & Gardens Program Can Impact Your Community
School Coops & Gardens Programs can have a greater community impact that just benefiting students! Our programs seek to provide practical, hands-on learning opportunities in poultry mamagement and horticulture to instill a deeper understanding and appreciation for agricultutre and nutrition. Here, we examine 5 ways your school program can impact your community through your school chicken coop and garden.
A true farm to school model at Mountainside Montessori
Despite challenges with predators, Mountainside Montessori has seamlessly integrated animal husbandry into their existing curriculum. Students are being prepared for today’s workforce through a true farm to table experience—at their school! Although the program is run by the Adolescent class, the entire school reaps benefits from the chickens. “With chicken on campus, all our classrooms and age groups get to interact with the chickens. When the hogs have gone to processing, the chickens receive daily food scraps from all the classrooms’ compost buckets. Every classroom spends time outside each day and the younger classes, in particular, include a visit to the chickens on their daily walks.”
2023 Projects at Chickens.org
Read about current projects happening at Chickens.org including school and community Coops & Gardens Programs, nursing home visits and more!
Sustainable Seed Starters
Sustainable Seed StartersLast frost dates are just around the corner, which means it is time to start seeds! Are you looking for a more sustainable alternative to plastic seed trays this year? Try these options instead!Eggshells Eggshells create a durable seed cup...
Free Printable Chicken Themed Valentines Cards
Enjoy these free printouts for Val-HEN-tines day!
Keeping Roosters
Roosters, or rather one rooster, can be a great addition to a backyard flock…if you are allowed to have them. Many cities do not allow roosters because of their noise (a rooster’s crow is 100dB from 1 meter away).
If you are allowed to keep a rooster, there are many benefits for your flock…
Easy Homemade Pumpkin Purée Recipe
Learn how to make an easy pumpkin purée to use the insides of a pumpkin when you carve it, or have a pumpkin just for baking. The purée is a treat your chickens will love, or the base of many delicious fall dishes and deserts.
Healthy Pumpkin Oat Cookies to Share with Your Chickens
Recipe for healthy pumpkin cookies fit for breakfast or a snack with your favorite flock! Four simple ingredients make these cookies very easy to make.
Can Chickens Eat Pumpkins?
Can chickens eat pumpkins? Yes! Pumpkins are a great treat for chickens that provide vitamins A & E, Potassium, Zinc and other health benefits. Fed in moderation, your flock will love these delicious pumpkin treats.
Molting Chickens
You may be wondering why your chickens have been losing so many feathers. Often, this is normal, and it just means your chickens are molting!
Molting is the regular shedding and growth of new feathers. As feathers become worn, they fall out (molt) and new, healthy feathers grow in to replace the old. This typically happens on a large scale in the fall, after a chicken is a year old.
Recommended Books
Congratulations! You have decided to learn to raise chickens, garden, homestead, live more sustainably…but where do you start?
In effort to help you with easy chicken raising and easy gardening, we have done the research for you!
This is a living list of books we recommend about how to raise chickens, how to start a garden, food systems, composting, permaculture and other topics important to us and relevant to Coops and Gardens.
Beak Injuries in Chickens
Beak injuries are common among chickens and are generally the result of fighting with a predator or another chicken, trying to flee from a scary situation, or just a clumsy chicken doing everyday tasks.
Every so often, you may find one of your chickens has hurt their beak; you may see blood, the beak broken off completely or chipped, or discoloration indicating a bruise (like Margo’s beak in the picture above).
Caring for Chickens in the Spring
If you live in a colder climate, you may be thrilled to see spring roll around. No more trekking through snow to change water and feed your flock! BUT…warmer weather does not mean less responsibility with your flock.
Check out these five easy steps to get your spring chicken keeping off to a good start!
15 Easy DIY Garden Markers
Whether you are new to gardening or are just like me and constantly forget which leaves are parsley versus which are cilantro, adding garden labels to your plants helps to not only beautify a garden, but also helps you remember what you have planted!
To help get you started, here are 15 easy and cheap DIY garden markers you can add to your own garden!
Fantastic Coops and Where to Find Them
What makes for easy chicken raising? Having a coop you and your girls love! Creating a space you love to spend time in or around will make keeping chickens so much more enjoyable (as if they do not make it enjoyable on their own). Check out these ten fantastic chicken...
Chicken First Aid Kit- Why You Should Have One and What to Include
To give your chickens their best chance at survival when something goes wrong, it is a good idea to be prepared by having a fully stocked Poultry First Aid Kit.
Below you will find an alphabetical list* of things we incorporate in our first aid kits.
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Chickens.org is a program of Capax World, a 501-c-3 charity dedicated to sustainably alleviating malnutrition and poverty.