Can chickens eat June bugs?

The last few weeks here in Pennsylvania we have been dealing with a massive amount of June bugs. My chicken's couldn't be happier. I started noticing it when I left a bucket outside overnight. It had a bit of water in it and it just happened to be on the ground under the garage door light. In the morning it was full of June bugs!

I decided to pour the whole thing into my chickens water bowl to see if they'd eat the bugs and they gobbled up every single one!

That's how I found out that chickens can eat June bugs!
But I started thinking if they are okay for chickens to eat? Is there any harm chickens eating june bugs? Are they too big? Will chickens choke on a bug that big?

Does a chicken run need a roof?

Somebody recently asked me if their chicken run needed a roof and I realized I hadn't really talked about this very much. Today I want to talk about run roofs, if you need one and the different types of materials they can be made with.

All of my chicken runs have roofs of one type or another, even though one of them is only net. I firmly believe in protecting chickens as much as possible in their own coop and run, for both their safety and my sanity. So let's talk about the different types of run roofs.

How raising chickens saves you money!

When talking about saving money with chickens, most everyone discusses how to cut your chicken keeping costs. I do it quite often actually. Today though I want to talk about how keeping chickens saves you money in your home or homestead. 

Now I know a lot of people say that you can save money by having chickens for eggs because you get free eggs! I find that idea really hilarious because the first coop alone caused me $1500. So it's going to take a very very long time till you break even on the coop and even after that you still have to feed your hens so you really don't ever get free eggs. 

But you do get to control your food supply a bit so that's definitely a good thing. But I'm talking about the ways chickens save you money way beyond eggs! Like the way they save you money in the yard or garden!

Salt cured egg yolks

Today I'm going to do something completely new for me... I'm going to talk about something I just started doing! I learned how to salt cure egg yolks a few months back and they are amazing! They're super simple to do and you really need to try it!

Now normally I won't write a post about something until I've been doing it for a long time but this is so simple and delicious that I just have to share! Especially since egg season is starting and with the spring days getting longer and warmer lots of us are starting to get overwhelmed with eggs.

I've made these about 5 times so we're just going with it today

Also, I'm going to be sharing my meringue recipe soon so I'll give you a way to use up all those whites that we'll have left over! Unfortunately I'm not really a recipe developer so I don't have some great but long story prepared about how this recipe reminds of some time in the past etc etc. LOL 

Household objects that work surprisingly well in chicken coops

A chicken coop doesn't need very much for the chickens to be happy. Some windows, a few nest boxes, perches and a place for their food & water and they will be perfectly content! However, adding some decorations or storage can make the coop more useable for you. Over the years I've repurposed a bunch of different household items to my chicken coops.

Many of them are for decoration like pictures, some are functional like lights but I also put several items in the coop for storage or organization. It's nice to be able to use previously unused space like wall space to store things and keep them within reach for when I'm tending the chickens!

It's also a good way to get a little bit more use out of things that might not be ready for the landfill just yet...