Blogging fills the planet with information. Much of it fills us with amazement, awe and humour. Some fills us with constination and feeds our curiosity. Some is downright misinformed and even dangerous and misguided.

Heading towards my first anniversary as a Chicken Mumma, I have devoured both blogs and books to learn about my feathered friends. I follow a few popular chicken bloggers with a view to picking up ideas, but also with a massive pinch of cynism realize that even in the world of chickens, likes and follower numbers can overide the welfare of the birds.

Managing chickens is not a difficult task. It is time consuming with all the cleaning and checking for health issues like mites and feather pecking. Fun comes from interaction with your flock and providing extra treats and amusements to deal with bad weather boredom.

But sometimes too much conflicting web information or regurgitating others messages and preporting to be your own just wastes our time.

I have therefore pushed myself to read between the lines and make my own observations with a huge dollop of common sense thrown in too; and will be putting up quite a few articles on chicken management to clear the fog.

A good book to start with is Fact or Poop. I love the concept. It’s a great read debunking the myths. Andy Schneider has a practical no-nonsense style and gets to the bottom of what is actually a simple message….fads and trends are fun but in reality chickens need clean coops, regular checks for injuries and mites and the correct feed to maintain protein levels if your keeping eggers. The rest may increase your traffic: herb recipes, flowers in the coop and debates about straw and sand in the coop, but take a lot of it with a pinch of salt or in our case a pinch of diamateous earth! *

*Used to help control mites. The powder effectively dehydrated the mite and kills it. Use in chicken dust baths and when the coop is cleaned, dusting over all cracks, crevices and hard to reach places. Better still…redesign your coop to allow for easier cleaning and less inaccessible areas.