Chicken Family Planning 101

It's a story we hear more often than you'd think. Someone picks up a few chicks at the feed store or takes in a small flock, and a year or two later they're overwhelmed. What start...

The Dark Side of Feedstore Chicks

By Sherstin Rosenberg, DVM.Sherstin is the executive director at Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary, a non-profit 501(c)(3) animal sanctuary located in San Luis Obispo, CA.THE PROBLEMEvery...

Coccidia

If you've done a fecal test on your chickens (and if you haven't, you should!), you may have seen the word "coccidia" on your results. It's one of the most common findings in backy...

Quarantine

Updated on January 19, 2026.We’ve been talking a lot about quarantine lately due the covid-19 pandemic. The word originates from the Venetian “quarantena” meaning "forty days". It...

Predator proofing

Updated on April 17, 2025.I often hear horror stories involving a raccoon or a dog entering a chicken coop and massacring all the birds. Too many well-meaning chicken keepers set u...

Coop upkeep

Updated on April 7, 2025.It’s spring cleaning time! Pick a nice sunny day and thoroughly clean your coop. Scrub the roosts, remove all bedding, sweep the floor, and disinfect the h...

Happy chickens

Updated on March 29, 2025.A chicken who doesn’t get adequate enrichment and mental stimulation will be more inclined towards problem behaviors. Feather pecking, being noisy, bully...

Welcoming New Chickens to the Flock

Last month, we welcomed two new hens: Rose and Blanche, 12-year-old Ameraucanas from a sister sanctuary. Integrating new chickens into an established flock can be stressful for all...

Do chickens like attention?

Do chickens like attention or would they rather be left alone?This is an interesting question I was asked during one of my recent chicken care classes. The short answer is “It depe...

Sweetie and frostbite

Chickens Just Want to Be WarmBy Melanie Moonstone.Melanie is the founder of Rooster Redemption, a non-profit 501(c)(3) animal sanctuary located in Skagit County, WA. You can follow...

The birds and the bees

Let’s talk about how baby chicks are made. Chickens reproduce sexually, meaning that they need a male and a female who combine their genetic material to create a genetically unique...

The fabulous vision of chickens

We’ve recently welcomed 3 hens who each have an eye injury. Athos’ right eye was cloudy, Porthos’ left cornea and eyelid were damaged, and Aramis’ left eye was bulging out. Our avi...

Prolapse

Earlier this month, I happened to be at Rancho Compasión & Blackberry Creek sanctuary when Opal had great difficulty laying an egg. Her egg was positioned askew and while straining...

The Coop Life: A Chicken Keeping Story

By Carina DeVeraCarina DeVera (she/her) is an animal advocate, outdoor enthusiast, and writer. She has been a dedicated champion for animals since she was a child, when — to the ch...

Vegan in the New Year?

At Clorofil, we’ve been vegan for almost a decade. I grew up in France where eating meat, dairy, and eggs was the norm. And although I made at a young age the connection between th...

Lessons from the lockdown

The highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has been decimating birds across the whole country since the beginning of the year. It hit California in mid-July and is still active i...

Bursting lockdown boredom

By Jenni MorrisJenni Morris is the Social Media Manager and Adoptions Coordinator at Goatlandia Farm Animal Sanctuary, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit helping animals, people, and the planet...

The faces of the egg industry

Meet Fennel, Sweetie, and Curry, three of our hens who have been rescued respectively from a caged, cage-free, and a pasture egg farm.Fennel was a very loving hen. She adored being...

Summer and scaly leg mites

Summer is our newest resident. She is a red hen who was found as a stray. She was in rough shape: missing lots of feathers, bright red spots on her skin, thick scabby and crusty fe...

Where does the chicken come from?

Yes, chickens descend from the jungle fowl who themselves descend from the Tyrannosaurus rex (see "Her great-great-...-great-grandma was a T-rex"). But closer in their family tree,...

Queen of Diamonds

Chickens are smarter than we think! If you’ve been following our social media, you’ve seen Sweetie taking on the Queen of Diamonds' challenge at the beginning of the holiday and th...

Personalized care

While it is convenient to treat all our chickens the same, sometimes their individual needs lead us to create specialized setups and personalized care. With our first 3 chickens, w...

Flystrike

We’ve been talking about flystrike and the need to keep chickens’ butts clean in our chicken care classes but we didn’t expect to get a hands-on experience last month! Sweetie, our...

Salpingitis and lash eggs

I remember the first time we found a weird little rubbery egg in the nestbox. It clearly wasn’t an egg, but it took us a while to identify it as a lash egg and learn what it was. W...

Buttercup the Cornish Cross

By Abbie Hubbard.Abbie is a dog behaviorist with Humane Society International, and lives with 2 dogs, 3 parrots, 4 budgies, 4 chickens, 2 pheasants and a turkey. You can follow her...

Parasitic worms

Last month, we discussed external parasites. Today, we are going to look at the worms who live inside our chickens.There are 3 groups of worms: roundworms, flatworms, and thorny-he...

External parasites

A parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host and gets its food from or at the expense of its host. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterized parasites as "predators t...

Palliative care and CBD

Fleur is a little white leghorn rescued from a battery cage farm at the end of 2017. She joined our sanctuary in the following spring. She was in poor shape with her broken foot an...

Fat chickens

Chai ran through the yard to greet me, her limping seemed heavier. I picked her up and checked if something was stuck under her feet, but I didn’t see anything. She has been slight...

Adopt, don't shop

With spring around the corner, we are starting to see lots of ads to buy baby chicks. Please resist the temptation of buying these fuzzy balls of cuteness and adopt instead.This is...

Bedding materials

Bedding is an important part of keeping your chickens happy and healthy. In the hen house, the bedding provides a soft surface for the chickens to walk on, jump from the roost, and...

Thinking about having chickens?

Updated on February 21, 2024.It’s the New Year and one of your resolutions may be to get chickens. So, let’s discuss the pros and cons of keeping chickens so you can make the right...

Gearing up checklist

So, you decided to bring chickens into your family. You have weighed the pros and cons of sharing your life with chickens, read everything you could put your hands on about chicken...

Larissa and fowl pox

By Darcy Smith.Darcy is the co-founder of the Funky Chicken Rescue, a non-profit 501(c)3 all animal rescue / sanctuary located in Vacaville, CA. You can follow Funky Chicken on soc...

wildfire smoke

I have a light headache, my sinuses are congested, and my throat is itchy. No, it’s not covid nor the flu. It’s the smoke I have been inhaling for the last few weeks. With wildfire...

Fire evacuation preparedness

After an unusually hot week, a thunderstorm broke out and lightnings sparked many fires here in California. These wildfires have been devouring many thousands of acres displacing p...

Vaccination

In farms, chickens are usually vaccinated against a variety of diseases including Marek's disease, Newcastle disease, infectious bronchitis, infectious laryngotracheitis, fowl pox,...

Dogs and birds

By Abbie Hubbard.Abbie is a dog behaviorist with Humane Society International, and lives with one dog, 2 African Grey parrots, 3 turkeys, and 6 budgies. You can follow her on Insta...

Bumblefoot

Bumblefoot is a term used to describe a staph infection on a chicken’s foot. It comes from the old British word “bumble” meaning “to walk unsteadily”. Staph is the shorthand for th...

My ideal coop

During a decade of keeping chickens, we have modified, fixed and extended our original coop. We also added a few extra coops and structures in the yard to fit all the needs that ca...

Biosecurity

: security from exposure to harmful biological agents Merriam-WebsterBiosecurity is a big word that may sound a bit scary. It may invoke images of isolation tents guarded by milit...

Scout and scissor beak

We love heartwarming stories like Sweetpea's incredible luck and recovery, or The Special Ones at Blackberry Creek Farm animal sanctuary. Today we are bringing Scout's story to yo...

Turkeys

As birds raised for meat, their bodies have been engineered to grow big muscles extremely fast, so they reach slaughter weight at 4-5 months of age. Their heart and skeleton can ba...

Sweetpea

By Danielle Hanosh. Danielle is the co-founder of Blackberry Creek Farm Animal Sanctuary. In June we received a phone call about a chicken who had been the victim of a dog attack....

Molting

It was like they had a pillow fight in the hen house! Poppy started molting overnight. Molting, moulting, sloughing, shedding, or ecdysis is the manner in which animals routinely...

Diseases from chickens

Can chickens make people sick? This is a question I get asked often, and for good reason. We keep hearing alarming news about a worldwide epidemic of bird flu (aka avian influenza)...

Dealing with death

Sharing your life with chickens is quite fun and full of delights. Unfortunately their life is more temporary than ours, and we can’t help feeling heartbroken when they leave this...

My chicken ain't doing right

Updated on July 7th, 2021.My hen was acting strange. Instead of foraging with her sisters, she came and sat next to me while I was in the garden. The others in my little 3-hen floc...

Gardens for chickens

It’s springtime! Time to take your trowel and spade out of the shed, and plant your garden! While selecting new ornamental and edible plants to add to your backyard, think about yo...

Bird brains

By Rhianna Axon Rhianna is the Animal Care Director at Charlie’s Acres Farm Animal Sanctuary. I bet you’ve heard the phrase “bird brain” used as an insult before, but it’s actuall...

Egg labels

There are so many labels on an egg carton nowadays that it’s easy to be both overwhelmed and confused. What do all these labels mean? And what do they not?Let’s start with the labe...

Peppa's coop

Peppa came to our micro-sanctuary last summer. She is a 6-year-old Brahma bantam who lost her vision and started to be bullied by her flock mates. Being tiny and blind in the chick...

The Special Ones

By Danielle Hanosh. Danielle is the co-founder of Blackberry Creek Farm Animal Sanctuary. Dashing through the door of the feedstore and out of the downpour, I rushed over to the c...

Bachelor flocks

By Lauren Cole. Lauren is an Animal Care Technician at Marin Humane where she loves socializing with all the feathered friends who arrive at the shelter. Bachelor flocks – flocks...

California Prop 12

Last month we talked about the many different chicken breeds. Let’s have a closer look at the lives of the 7.7 billion egg laying hens living in the world today. 90% of them live i...

Chicken breeds

Like dogs, chickens come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. There are more than 400 breeds of chickens. Some have fancy feathers and big combs, some lay blue eggs, some are tiny, an...

Waterers

Chickens drink more than they eat (see did-you-know card on drinking water), so it’s very important that they always have access to fresh water. Let’s see the different ways to que...

Feeders

We talked about what to feed chickens a few months ago (see newsletters “What to feed chickens?” part 1 and part 2). Today we are going to discuss how to feed them. There is a gre...

Best home for an older hen

How old is an old hen? Well it depends on whom you ask... For the egg factory farmer, it’s 18 months just after she reaches peak production. For the smaller farmer, it’s around 3 y...

Second coop

Having an extra coop can become very handy in many situations. Here are the multiple roles a second coop can fill: The hospital coop to separate a sick or injured chicken from the...

Adopt, don't shop

We bought our first chickens. We selected Ameraucanas based on their breed traits: docile, not broody, bears confinement well, and the fact that they were good layers. We bought th...

A second life for ex-commercial hens

We welcomed Luna and Maya to our micro-sanctuary on New Year’s Eve. They are two adorable 2-year-old White Leghorns coming from an egg factory. The first time we adopted hens rescu...

What to feed chickens? - part 2

The complete feeds we discussed in part 1 make up the bulk of your chickens’ diet. However it is good to add these other foodstuffs. Calcium Laying hens require lots of calcium t...

What to feed chickens? - part 1

The variety of choices found in feed stores can be overwhelming: pellets or grains, conventional or organic, soy or not... And it becomes even more difficult when you start researc...

It's our 1-year anniversary!

♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ chicken dance music♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ One year ago, Clorofil became an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit.♩ ♫ ♬ That same month, we published our first newsletter.♩ ♫ ♬ In spring, we went o...

Introducing new chickens

Updated on May 18th, 2025.Chickens are like potato chips... You can never just have one... or even two. But adding new chickens to an existing flock is not as easy as it may sound....

Pecking order

Ever seen your chickens bickering with each other?It usually happens around a valuable resource like the feeder, the favorite nest box, the higher roost. The aggressor is reminding...

DIY coop

We would like to thank our friend Dan for his help with this newsletter. Chickens don’t require much gear, but they do need a coop. A big and safe coop. A chicken coop usually ref...

Cool chickens

When temperatures reach the 80s, we slow down. We put on our shorts and flip flops, sit by the pool, and sip on a margarita. We need to help our chickens to do the same. They don’t...

Her great-great-...-great-grandma was a T-rex

Birds descended from a group of two-legged dinosaurs whose members include the Tyrannosaurus rex and the velociraptors. And no bird is more closely related on the genetic level to...

Gardening with chickens

Chickens are foragers. They spend many hours scratching the soil in search of food. With proper management (that is by fencing off your vegetable garden and your beautifully manicu...

Roosters

On January 28th, we entered the year of the rooster! It is said that people born in this year are hard-working, talented, punctual, kind, capable and adventurous.Roosters are aweso...

Chickens in the rain

It’s the rainy season here in California, and our beautiful hills are green again. While the chickens love the fresh new growths, how much do they enjoy the rain? Is it okay to let...

Baking without eggs

Around this time of year, when the days are getting shorter, most hens stop laying. They take a break until spring, which is a more favorable season for raising chicks. It’s also t...

Chickens are smarter than we think

As chicken keepers we know our birds are smart individuals, but new studies show that we may be underestimated how smart they are. Research from the University of Bristol has demon...