Chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese and more!
Poultry
What Duck Breed is Best for You?
Are you having a hard time deciding what breed of duck would work best for your homesteading needs? Check out this blog comparing common breeds offered.
How to Revive a Weak Chick
we do our best to ensure their safety during transit, there are many factors that are out of our control. If your chicks arrive weak, chilled or lethargic here are a few tips to help ensure their survival:
Farmstead Brooding: The Extreme Edition
In this Coop Tour, Amanda and Marie from the Meyer Hatchery CSR Remote Team, shows us Marie’s Extreme Edition Farmstead Brooding inside a high tunnel.
How To Make Cured Egg Yolks
There are so many egg recipes out there for your farm fresh eggs, but sometimes you want to try something a bit different. A great recipe to try, and really amaze your family and friends is cured egg yolks. Many thoughts come to mind with cured egg yolks, is it safe, how will it taste, is this hard to do? Well not only are cured eggs really easy to make, but they also taste amazing, really celebrating the egg yolk, and it’s deep flavor. Here is a simple recipe for making these wonderful treats.
Breed Spotlight: Raising Heritage Turkeys
Everything that I read boasted about the amazing taste of the heritage turkey breeds and their great foraging abilities. So naturally, I needed to give them a try. Due to the minimum order requirement of 20 for heritage turkey breeds and not wanting quite so many turkeys I split an order with a fellow Meyer Hatchery Remote team member, Sarah. For my portion of the order, I received six Bourbon Red, three Black Spanish, and three Midget White. Sarah’s order included three Chocolate, three Royal Palm, three Blue Slate, and three Narragansett.
Top 10 Best Chicken Reads
Attention all chicken enthusiasts! Do you enjoy reading or learning about chickens? If so please be sure to check out what I call my top 10 chicken reads! I have selected a wide variety of books that cover anything and everything chicken related from identification, health, handling, and raising, showing and even cooking.
Heritage Turkeys and Coop Tour
In this coop tour, Amanda and Sarah from the Customer Service Remote Team are at Sarah’s farm to show you their new heritage turkey poults and give you a tour of Sarah’s coops.
My Journey to Backyard Chickens
Renee writes her first Meyer Hatchery Blog and talks about how she began with her backyard chickens. It’s not what you would expect!
Let’s Learn: Chicken Egg Anatomy 101
As an Agriculture teacher one of my favorite topics to teach about is poultry. There are so many topics and discussions to cover that I could teach a year round class on poultry alone and would not be able to cover everything. With that being said, I do believe it is important to understand the anatomy of the egg itself.
Breed Spotlight: The Delaware
The Delaware chicken breed has a rich history that begins in the early 1940’s in Ocean View, Delaware. Learn more about the Delaware here!
Auto-sexing versus Sex-linked Hybrid Breeds
The desire to have as many female chicks as possible is so great that there are specific breeds of chickens that have been bred so that the flock owner or hatchery can determine the gender of day-old chicks more easily. Breeds that are either autosexing breeds or sex-linked hybrid breeds produce chicks that are slightly different colors between the genders at hatch.
Breed Spotlight: The Rhode Island Red
The Rhode Island Red originated in Little Compton, Rhode Island in the mid 1800’s, making it one of the oldest American-bred chicken breeds. It began in farmers’ homestead flocks, where a highly productive egg layer was needed, but whose excess roosters could still dress out as decent table birds.
Why Isn’t My Frizzle Chick Frizzled?
The frizzle feathering sometimes found in chickens is a rare occurrence, and therefore highly desired in some breeds. Here is an overview of how the frizzle feather mutation occurs and why not all chicks sold as frizzles will have frizzled feathers.
Why Blue Chicken Breeds May Not Look Blue
One of the most enjoyable things about keeping chickens is the vast range of different colors and patterns that the chicken breeds can display, allowing us all to have a beautiful flock. But in a few breeds, the chick you receive in your flock may grow up to not resemble the breed’s photo on our website or in our catalog. Here’s an explanation of why the blue chicken breeds will also have black and splash chicks as possible color variations you may receive.
Cleaning and Storing Freshly Laid Eggs
Cleaning is not always necessary, as freshly laid eggs have a protective layer called the “bloom”, that seals out bacteria and allows the eggs to last longer outside of the refrigerator. Consider this when deciding where you’ll be storing them.
Always try to provide fresh bedding for your hens to help keep eggs cleaner (and keep your girls happier also!) Fresh bedding will not always guarantee cleanliness, but will give you a better probability.
Using the Incredible Egg WasherKit: Clean Eggs Sell!
You can certainly use plain hot tap water to wash the eggs, but I have found the Incredible Egg Washer kit to be a much more effective and efficient way to clean the eggs. Since I have a large flock and gather about 60 eggs a day, I was spending about 30 minutes hand washing each egg at my kitchen sink.
More Than Just Chicks: How to Raise Exotic Pheasants
Meyer Hatchery carries a variety of exotic pheasants, take a look at general overview on how to raise exotic pheasants to start your adventure today!
5 Dual Purpose Breeds To Consider
A dual purpose breed is one that lays eggs consistently, and can be used for meat. Here are 5 dual purpose breeds to consider this season!
