Beginner Barn

How (Not) to Make a Goat Fence

Barnyard

Ivory’s Totally Secure Goat Fence 1.  Put up worthless chicken fence. 2.  Get sick of it and tear it down, vowing to put up a new one so the monsters won’t kill your garden and fruit trees. 3.  Fail. 4.  Borrow MIL’s boss’s brother’s manual transmission, diesel, 16-ft flatbed with a lift and drive 20 [...]

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Protecting Chicks-n-Goats on Winter Nights

Barnyard

What do you do with them in the winter?  Do they come inside? NO! Here is the great thing about having farm animal pets.  They’re hardy! The chickens, you need to do nothing.  NOTHING!  They roost in my window sill or up in the bushes and puff themselves out and do just fine. The goats [...]

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Backyard Chicken Neighborhood PR

Barnyard

Information is good. It clears up misunderstandings, calms fears, and promotes harmony. I put together a pdf, a one-page handout for urban and suburban chickeners to give to their neighbors along with that goodwill basket of eggs/goodies: Printable Neighbor Handout It gives an overview of the reasons we love our birds and answers some of [...]

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Backyard Chickens: 5 Things I Didn’t Know

Barnyard

Is that not one of the grossest things you’ve ever seen?  GOSH, molting is nasty looking.  And, all of them are molting at once, which means every morning it looks like a chicken exploded in my back yard.  The first time I thought one got eaten! Anyway, at over a 18 months of chicken ownership, [...]

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Composting with Chickens

Barnyard

My compost pile is located inside the chicken yard– part coincidence, part deliberate decision, and it’s been a good combo. The compost pile has always been beside the outbuilding which is now the chicken house. When I enclosed a space connected to the chicken house, I included the compost pile area and it’s naturally the [...]

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