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Sorry for your loss. In my opinion hawks are varmints. I love ducks. They are super hardy, seldom get diseases and tolerate adverse weather well, but when it comes to predators they are the most helpless of all poultry species.

Awesome, Steve! Unfortunately I don't possess anything near your building skills, but this is really neat. It looks like you have a secure coop and that underneath run for your birds at night (or a weekend away), which is good. Predators are the absolute worst problem I've ever had with poultry...

I think guineas are neat too. I don't have any right now, I just have chickens. I've never had aggression issues with chickens but I have heard of it. I think the key is to make sure everyone has plenty of space. Guineas do love to free range, but no poultry species is 100% safe from predators...

Much as my birds would love to free range, I can't let them because there are too many hawks around. I let them out when I'm working in the yard or in the early evening before it gets dark, and they love it, but most of the time they are confined, with 4 sq ft of coop space and 20 sq ft of run...

In my experience roosters definitely can have individual personalities, and they can change with age, often for the worse. At times I've had more than one, with plenty of hens, and all of the roos got along fine while they were young, but at around 2 years of age one got really aggressive to the...

Cool! I've done a lot of these things myself. My run has a turkey wire top so I couldn't put a bale of hay or straw in because it would get wet and moldy, but in the fall I throw raked leaves in, which they love, weeds, which they also love and gives them a source of greens, pumpkins and other...

I've had black snakes kill and eat full-grown Coturnix quail. I had one kill and try to eat a "teenage" Muscovy duckling. It couldn't get the shoulders down, so it regurgitated it, but the result was still a dead duckling. Black snakes will get under a broody hen and literally eat the eggs out...

I've always brooded chicks using a securely hung heat lamp (2 lamps in bad weather in case a bulb blew) and a circular draft guard 6 ft in diameter, or in a black snake-proof home-made brooder with a wire mesh bottom and top. It was large enough so that my chicks (I'd brood as many as 25 at a...

One potential incompatibility that comes to my mind would be crested breeds (Polish, for example) in a mixed flock. Other hens may pull the feathers out of their crests. And I have had that happen. But other than that, I've raised many different breeds together and never had a problem...

Cochins. They are beautiful, gentle, and great if you want a broody breed. Right up there would be Polish. But for a purely practical flock, I'd say Rhode Island Reds and Plymouth Rocks (I like the barred variety), which are also attractive as well as practical. I had good luck with Black Stars...

Years ago, I raised small flocks of BBB and Great Whites. You're right, it's very easy to become attached to turkeys, as they are literally "gentle giants" and seem so trusting. As I said this was years ago, and most hatcheries only carried commercial breeds back then. Although I took the proper...

If you want foragers I would pick breeds with naturally camouflaging plumage like brown leghorns (similar pattern and colors of the wild jungle fowl, the main ancestor of the chicken), anconas, etc. I rarely let mine (Delawares, NH Reds) out to forage because of hawks. Silkies and cochins are...

Neat article! This pretty much sums up my experience with broodies. And I too had my own "Lemon", i.e., a breed that wasn't supposed to go broody but was the best broody hen I ever had. She was a Black Star. With chickens, I always opt for moving the hen. I tried marking, but still found eggs...

I wouldn't trust any dog 100%. But our daughter dumped two dogs on us and they too are acclimated to the hens. Plus both of them are old. I can let the hens out with them. I only let them out for periodic runs because we too are overrun with hawks, which I personally consider varmints rather...

I've had poultry most of my life and I've never gotten sick from them. I take the basic common sense precautions like washing my hands, and I also do my best to keep the coop and run as clean as I can, for the sake of everyone's health. I agree, sometimes reading things will make you paranoid...

I have raised many ducks, but never for eggs. I always let them set and hatch their own, and pretty much stuck with breeds that did so. But they say that with chickens, egg production decreases ca. 20% over the previous year's production after each molt. So I imagine that the case would be...

I live in the South and big rat snakes are common. They couldn't eat and therefore wouldn't attack an adult chicken, but unfortunately they can and will eat eggs and chicks. I've even caught them under a broody eating eggs out from under her. And I had one eat a full-grown quail once. And kill a...

I've had diverse breeds over the years (most of my life) that I've raised chickens. Since my wife (who puts up with my birds and all the fuss involved with them) likes brown eggs best, I've generally had brown egg layers. I like black stars, but I found that the red stars (or whatever else they...

I think an electric fence is a good solution. It's worked for me in the past. The only other sure fire predator-proofing method is a solidly-built coop and a run with a top, preferably made out of turkey wire and/or hardware cloth (even a small determined predator can tear chicken wire, and...

I think an electric fence is a good solution. It's worked for me in the past. The only other sure fire predator-proofing method is a solidly-built coop and a run with a top, preferably made out of turkey wire and/or hardware cloth (even a small determined predator can tear chicken wire, and...