a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Sharp beaks – happy chickens

    Sharp beaks
    Sharp beaks

    Healthy chickens have very sharp beaks. They need them to peck at food, dig in the dirt, and when hunting, to kill their prey. Chickens will quickly spear and kill a field mouse. Chicken beaks are complex organs with many sensory neurons which help the chicken sense things. Sadly, most commercial hen layers are debeaked as chicks. The reason is that when chickens are crowded too close, a chicken will peck to tell the other chicken it is too close. With crowded chickens, this pecking can cause injury and once a chicken develops a wound and starts to bleed, other chickens will peck at the wound leading to severe injury and death. But all you have to do is give the chickens enough room and they won’t peck each other. The next time you buy eggs, ask your grocer if the hen that laid your egg was debeaked.

    Chickens at A Man and His Hoe are never debeaked.

  • January Sun

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    The sun is out this January morning. Chickens enjoy lots of sun. You can’t raise healthy chickens without letting them soak in all the sun they want, and letting them roam as much as they want. The next time you buy chicken, ask your grocer, “How much sun did this chicken get? How far was it allowed to roam? Did it ever get to chase another chicken around a tree, or cross a bridge over a stream? Eat a tadpole or a frog?”

  • Two Week Old Chicks

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    The chicks are two weeks old today. Even though it’s a wet December day, their mother is taking them a long way from the cozy, dry barn where they bed down during the night. Flower beds are favorite spots for chickens to scratch, so if you are planning on getting chickens and want beautiful flower beds, you’ll need to pick one or the other. Or you’ll need to protect your flower beds with fencing.

    Out at the edge of the woods, when it’s time for protection or to get out of the steady rain, the chicks will huddle underneath their mother. A little rain doesn’t stop her.

  • Eggs of many colors and shapes

    Eggs of All Shapes
    Eggs of all shapes
    Beautiful Eggs
    Beautiful eggs

    Collecting eggs is always an adventure. An old trick I use to get hens to lay in certain nests is to keep some wooden eggs in the nest. Many hens prefer to lay eggs where other hens have.

    With eggs coming in so many different shades and sizes, why do large egg producers insist on packaging identical eggs in the same carton? Wouldn’t it be more exciting if every carton looked different inside? When I mentioned once to a clerk that I had chickens and that they laid eggs of various colors, she said that she once received a variety of eggs from a friend. She was thrilled at the various colors of the eggs, but her children refused to eat any of them. They would only eat perfectly white supermarket eggs. In a way it’s sad that most children have no idea how varied chicken eggs can be.

  • Outdoors At Last

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    It’s been 13 days since the chicks hatched, December 19. For the first time the mother hen has taken them outdoors. Now their diet will be primarily what they can find and they will soon be traveling great distances every day, becoming strong, healthy chickens.