One of the worst feelings as a chicken owner is when you have a sick bird and you are at a loss on how to help them. An impacted crop in a chicken can be a death sentence if you don’t have the right knowledge or tools to fix the issue. Here on Green Willow Homestead, we’ve had two hens who have suffered from an impacted crop. Thanks to the encouraging words from an avian vet, some YouTube research, and my own grit - we were able to save one of the two through operating on them ourselves. In this post, I want to teach you about what an impacted crop is, the options you have to fix it, and how to successfully perform surgery on your hen in order to save her life.
Today on the podcast we have on the queen of the coop herself - Lisa Steele of Fresh Eggs Daily. Lisa has been raising chickens naturally for over a decade on her Fresh Eggs Daily Blog and shares with us all about how you can get started with your first backyard flock. We love her down-to-earth advice on using herbs and natural means to care for your hens.
If you are a seasoned chicken owner and wondering what to do with all those excess eggs then Lisa's new cookbook The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook is full of delicious and fun recipes for you. Not to mention it's 45% off right now. This cookbook has become a staple in my kitchen and I especially love that the index offers recipes by the amount of eggs you have on hand! My personal favorite is the Boston Creme Pie recipe. That pie turns out beyond delicious and incredibly decadent. Lisa was and continues to be so generous with her knowledge and insight on chicken care - be sure to tune in 
Keeping chickens and goats together on your homestead or small farm is absolutely possible as long as you follow a few important rules and implement a few tricks. We’ve kept chickens and goats together successfully for the last two years inside our barn and I’ve learned some vital lessons along the way. In this blog post, you will learn everything you need to know when keeping goats and chickens together as well as what mistakes to avoid!
Through the hubbub of holiday shopping I like to keep it simple here at Green Willow Homestead - today through November 30th at midnight enjoy up to 35% off!
Grab the Holistic Home eBook, the Chicken or Goat Tractor Build Plans, our handcrafted Cocktail Bitters, or our herbal skincare products. Scroll on to learn more about all four deals! The Top Five Natural Winter Supplements To Give To Your Chickens To Boost Immunity And Health10/10/2022 
If you live in an area that gets blasted with snow and cold temperatures during the winter months, then your chickens are definitely going to need the extra nutritional boost only supplements can give.
Every winter on our farm in Wisconsin, I give a handful of high quality, natural supplements to my hens. In this post, I am going to share with you why you should consider supplementation during the winter months for your chickens, which supplements I recommend, and the benefits they provide for your flock. 
In this post, I’m going to share with you the DIY Coop Refresher Recipe I created to cut down on ammonia in my chicken coop that's 60% cheaper! If you’ve gotten started with chickens, chances are you have become all too familiar with the stinky smell of ammonia in your chicken coop. Ammonia is bad news not just for your nostrils, but for your hen’s health and egg production too.
Sweet PDZ Coop Refresher is an organic certified powder you can sprinkle under your chickens’ roost and around the coop to naturally keep the smell of ammonia down. While it absolutely works wonders, it’s incredibly overpriced.  Installing an automatic heated livestock watering system in our barn for our farm and homestead has been one of the biggest game-changers in reducing labor effort, maintaining cleanliness, and, most importantly, combating Old Man Winter’s relentless effort to freeze everything in sight through our cold Wisconsin months. In this post, we will cover absolutely everything you need to know on how to build and install your own automatic heated livestock watering system for your barn - including plumbing supplies, heating elements, and step-by-step instructions for installing the automatic watering system.
Turns out I'm not the only one that feels like a fish out of water when the humidity and heat strike hard mid-July here in Wisconsin. My chickens were right there with me! Chickens and high heat plus humidity can be a deadly combination, especially this Wisconsin summer with the heat index climbing into the low 100s. So I wanted to share a few of the tips and tricks I've learned to keep my flock comfortable when I feel personally feel like melting.
Getting chickens out on pasture using an A-Frame chicken coop tractor is one of the best ways to give your hens access to the absolute best food. We built these A-frame chicken coop tractors to help remedy a handful of issues we kept running into when raising our hens.
My rambunctious chickens would never fail to stray a bit too far, get on the wrong side of the fence, and into our neighbors' yards. When I would open the coop door every morning, offering them their free-range freedom, I found myself checking on them every 45 minutes. It would disrupt my day, I was constantly stressed out, and the hens would always wind up into some sort of trouble. At that point, the only alternative was to keep them cooped up (hah), forbidding them access to all the wonderful things a free range chicken would have. That's where our A-frame mobile chicken coop tractor made chicken keeping a hundred percent easier! 
When chickens get lice or mites, it can cause a number of problems for your flock. From a dip in egg production to undue stress that negatively affects their immune system, these external parasites are bad news for your hens. When they show up, you want to get rid of them as soon as possible. So how do you do that?
I’ve found MannaPro Poultry Protector spray to be the most effective and quick non-toxic way to get rid of lice and mites. The issue is I own over 75 hens, so when I used Poultry Protector spray to kill lice and mites, I would go through a bottle a day! With each bottle ringing up at $12, it was an expensive treatment and I couldn’t keep footing the bill. So I did my research and came up with a DIY Poultry Protector spray that costs me a fraction of the price (1/5 the cost to be exact!) and works just as well. In this post, I’m going to share it with you so you can help your hens and save a chunk of change too. |
Meet Kelsey,Thanks for stopping by Green Willow Homestead! From chicken rearing to composting, we've got our hands full and we love sharing what we've learned along the way. Follow along as we turn the 80 acres we call home into a farm that serves its community and a homestead that nourishes us throughout the seasons. 
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