The Coop Scoop
Giving you the dirt on all things raising chickens, gardening, composting, and living sustainably!
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
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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.
Spices and Herbs That Are Good for Chickens
If you raise backyard chickens, chances are you love to spoil them. We have such a fun time feeding our flock grapes and other treats, but did you know your “spoiling” of your flock can be beneficial to their health?
Adding small amounts of these herbs is a great way to boost your chickens’ overall health!
How to care for Bumblefoot in chickens.
Bumblefoot (ulcerative pododermatitis) is a Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) bacterial infection in poultry and other birds caused by damage to tissue on their feet.
I accidentally froze a chicken egg with the shell…can I still eat it?
This morning, my mom Googled, “I accidentally placed a chicken egg in the freezer…is it still okay to eat?” (And yes, I am still laughing about this)
Mop Bucket Shenanigans: One Farmer’s Tale of Her Crazy Chickens’ Chosen Nest Box
Sometimes I laugh to think about what must have gone through my Buff Orphington–Lily’s–head the first time she decided to lay in the mop bucket.
Unique Egg Stash
“I am not sure why the Easter Bunny is a bunny. Chickens are much better at hiding eggs.”
Christmas Tree Jungle Gym
The lights have been taken down, the Christmas music has stopped playing and all that is left is your tree. What to do with your amazing-smelling Douglas fir which brought you so much joy—glistening in your living room, decorated floor to ceiling in glittering lights...
Chicken Companions
My memories of raising chickens are happy ones. My parents would bring us three siblings to the feed store, where they would sell chicks each spring in a long row of boxes, one for each breed. They stuck a picture of each full grown chicken on the box so we could see...
Life Lessons from Chickens
The great thing about raising chickens was the satisfaction of routine and consistency, and the ultimate payout of fresh eggs. It was the same familiar, exciting process every year: Each spring we would return to the feed store and pick out another chick. One year,...
Chicken Funeral
We had a chicken funeral once, which was most memorable because my little brother almost burned out my eye with a stick of incense. Our dad was trying to teach us a Chinese tradition that he had learned as a kid: At a funeral you light incense, hold it between...
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