These are some links to useful web pages about keeping chickens. You’ll find everything here from suggestions for a basic setup to articles about hatching and brooding your own chicks, in fact practically anything you need to know!
Daily Routine – a post from my own blog!
Chicken Keeping – a really useful site with good links
93 useful questions – I wonder why they didn’t make it 100?!
Chicken Vet – online support for chicken health
Feeding your hens – a useful guide
Chicken Questions – if you can’t find the information you need, ask!
Winter Care – a page of general info about over-wintering hens in the garden
Dobbies – use the sidebar links to pages about all aspects of hen care
All About Runs – an extract from Practical Poultry by Chris Graham
Keeping Chickens – online information from The Poultry Pages
Hen Breeds – a useful short guide to common breeds of hen
Hen Breeds – a longer guide to breeds of hen in the UK
All about Eggs – DEFRA leaflet (with pictures!)
Feathers – all about feathers!
PoultryKeeper.com – a hobby site run by a small group of poultry keeping enthusiasts with over 400 articles and lots of useful resources on keeping chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, guinea fowl and other poultry together with a forum and blogs.
Keeping Chickens Down The Lane – self sufficiency website
How to pick up a chicken – video by Terry Golsen of HenCam/Blog – a useful site based in the USA
Bottoms Up! A tasty something behind the tree stump
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Hen Supplies
Egg Sizes
New Size Weight Old Size
Very Large 73g +over Size 0
Size 1
Large 63 - 73g Size 1
Size 2
Size 3
Medium 53 - 63g Size 3
Size 4
Size 5
Small 53g +under Size 5
Size 6
Size 7
Egg Codes
Just for reference … all eggs that are sold as class A must be stamped with the following information: production method, country of origin, and a (five figure) producer id.
Codes on eggs indicate the following:
0 – Organic
1 – Free-Range
2 – Barn
3 – Cage
UK – Origin
12345 – Producer id
I’ve included this in my blog, as an online contact of mine bought some supposedly ‘free range’ eggs at her local market, only to identify the code as indicating they were from caged birds. Hopefully, if more people are aware of the codes, there will be less opportunity for the crooks … and a larger market for eggs produced by hens with decent living conditions!
Of course, this only applies to commercial sales. However, there are still regulations concerning selling eggs from home … see Farmgate Sales for more details.
