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. 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!
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Through the hubbub of holiday shopping I like to keep it simple here at Green Willow Homestead - today through December 2nd enjoy 40% off!
Grab the Holistic Home eBook, the Chicken Tractor Build Plans, or even preorder the Cultivating Capital Course at 40% off (no discount code needed) and start 2021 with your best foot forward. Scroll on to learn more about all three deals! The Top Five Natural Winter Supplements To Give To Your Chickens To Boost Immunity And Health11/3/2020 
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. 
There is nothing more wonderful for a gardener than sharing the love of gardening with another. In this case, we are talking about sharing that love with your chickens! Not only will chickens love to be included in your garden, but they also can take some of the gardening work off your shoulders. In this post, we will go over how you can work with your chicken’s instincts to prep and clean up your garden during the growing season, fertilize your soil, and till your cover crops under when the timing is right.
If you are curious to learn how to hatch chicks using a broody hen and how to care for mama hen and her chicks through their first few weeks then you are in right the right place.
In my previous post I shared with you everything you need to know on how to care for a broody hen and get her to hatch chicks. I highly recommend starting there first to learn how to support your broody hen for the 21 day incubation period and her hatch. In this post I am going to cover:
How To Hatch Chicks With A Broody Hen And How To Build A Brooder Box Out Of One Piece Of Plywood6/23/2020 
If you are trying to learn how to hatch chicks with a broody hen, you are in the right place! My first year of owning chickens I started with day-old chicks. Let me tell you it was a lot of work caring for those chicks (I don’t know how people do it who don’t work from home to be honest). Keeping poop out of the waterer, checking on chicks for pasty butt, adjusting the heat lamp, making sure they had enough food - it was constant work.
In this post I am going to teach you:
Don’t get me wrong, I loved having the hands-on experience and I adore my hand-raised hens. The thing is, once I let my very first hen go broody and raise her own clutch of chicks, I realized I am never going to raise chicks myself again. Why? Because broody mama hen was one thousand percent better at it than me! 
Figuring out how to use your existing property, or a brand new piece of land, and turn it into a homestead can be a daunting task. In this post, I’m going to share with you how we planned out our homestead on five acres over the course of five years. It’s so fun to see where we started when we first purchased our land, and then five years later, how everything turned out.
We’ll go over:
Welcome back to Week 4 of our 30-Day Food Security Plan. Can you believe it's been a month since we started learning about gardening, chicken keeping, foraging, and homemaking? I have been loving teaching you everything I know about food security and this week is no different. In this final post in our 30-Day Food Security Plan you will learn (click to jump!):
If you just found this series, be sure to head back to Week 1 so you can learn how this 30-Day Food Security Plan works and get started on the right foot! I want you to remember that you are completely capable of starting something new (like making your own yogurt). Sure, you're probably going to make some mistakes in the process as you learn but the payoff is worth it. Doing these things with a loved one or your kids will bring you some fun and purpose during this uncertain time. Let’s dive into Week 4! 
Learning how to hatch your own chicks using an incubator can be one of the most rewarding experiences as you start your first flock of backyard chickens. At Green Willow Homestead I’ve always let a broody mama hen do the work for me. While this leaves hatching eggs up to the true professionals (actual hens), the downside was that expanding my flock was dependent on my hens. What if I wanted a few clutches of chicks in June or July? That’s where incubating your own hatching eggs becomes necessary!
So today I’m having Erin Roy of The Harvest Trail Blog teach all of us exactly how to hatch your own chicks using an incubator. Erin is so knowledgeable about using incubators and hatching eggs and I can’t wait for you to learn from her! 
Welcome back to Week 3 on how to build food security for your family in less than 30 days. In Week 3 of our Food Security Plan, I am going to teach you (click to jump!):
If you just found this series, be sure to head back to Week 1 so you can learn how this Food Security series works and get started on the right foot! I want you to remember that you are completely capable of starting something new (like chicken keeping). Sure, you're probably going to make some mistakes in the process as you learn but the payoff is worth it. Doing these things with a loved one or your kids will bring you some fun and purpose during this uncertain time. Let’s dive into Week 3! |
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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