Daniel Foster

I’ve been hatching chicks in my backyard since , and I’ve lost count of how many plastic incubator domes I’ve gone through. After my first disastrous hatch with a styrofoam box (two chicks out of 24 eggs, because my thermometer was lying to me), I became obsessive about finding the best egg incubator for backyard … Read more

I lost two geese to a raccoon before I ever owned an automatic chicken coop door. That night, I sat in the dark with a flashlight and a length of plywood, swearing I would never let an open coop door beat me again. After keeping chickens for over a decade and testing 14 different doors … Read more

I lost three hens to a raccoon one October night because I forgot to close the coop door. That’s the moment I started testing every solar-powered automatic coop door I could get my hands on. After 14 months of testing 12 different models on three coops across two climates, I’ve narrowed my list down to … Read more

Getting up at 5:30 AM every single day to let the chickens out is the one thing about backyard chicken keeping that wears you down. I know because I did it for two years straight before I finally installed my first automatic coop door. The difference was night and day. My mornings belonged to me … Read more

Keeping chickens warm through a brutal winter used to mean a single 250-watt heat lamp swinging from a rope, and my flock paid the price for that choice one January. The bulb shifted, the pine shavings caught, and I lost half my pullets before I could grab a fire extinguisher. That single incident sent me … Read more

I lost three hens to a raccoon one October night, and I never heard a thing. By the time I checked the coop at sunrise, the run door had been pried open and my Buff Orpington was gone. That morning I ordered my first coop camera, and I’ve been testing models ever since. If you’re … Read more

I keep a small flock of six hens in my backyard, and the day I opened the coop to a sour, ammonia-heavy smell was the day I started taking nesting box herbs seriously. A few weeks later, after testing blends, pads, and DIY mixes across two coops and four seasons, my flock’s laying rate jumped … Read more

I remember the first time I walked into my coop at dusk and saw my hens acting like they’d been startled out of a daydream. Feathers puffed, refusing to roost, scratching at their vents like something invisible was crawling under their skin. It was mites. That single night sent me down a two-year rabbit hole … Read more

Keeping a backyard flock healthy means understanding what goes into their bodies beyond standard layer feed. Two supplements that come up in every poultry forum and feed store conversation are grit and oyster shell. They serve completely different purposes, yet many chicken keepers confuse them or skip one entirely. Oyster shell provides slow-release calcium carbonate … Read more

I still remember the day my first batch of mail-order chicks arrived looking limp and stressed. I panicked, called the feed store, and they told me to drop a packet of electrolytes into their water immediately. Within hours the little ones were perking up, drinking steadily, and acting like chicks again. That moment sold me … Read more