- Author: Pamela S Kan-Rice
If you raise backyard chickens or breed game fowl, UC Cooperative Extension has an app for you. The new mobile app offers information for raising healthy chickens.
To test the usefulness of the UC Community Chicken app to people raising chickens, the Poultry Lab at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine will pay poultry owners to participate in a two-week study with a follow-up survey three months later.
“Our study focuses on the development and evaluation of a new mobile app...
- Author: Pamela S Kan-Rice
The highly contagious avian flu is being spread primarily by migratory birds, putting game birds, and backyard and commercial poultry at risk.
“Poultry owners should take precautions to prevent their birds from contacting waterfowl or the habitat that waterfowl frequent because this strain of avian influenza is highly contagious,” said Maurice Pitesky, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine associate professor of Cooperative Extension.
Infected waterfowl shed the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus in their feces and respiratory secretions, where the...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Californians who raise chickens and game fowl are invited to participate in a study to help the University of California more effectively deliver poultry health information and prevent the spread of diseases such as avian influenza.
Myrna Cadena, a Ph.D. student working with Maurice Pitesky, UC Cooperative Extension poultry specialist at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, is leading a study with the Backyard Chickens and Game Fowl survey: https://bit.ly/3rWYpOa.
“Knowing how live birds are moved in California will be crucial in the event of a poultry disease outbreak,” Cadena said. “For example, if we...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
As Californians began sheltering in place at home, they started growing their own food. In addition to gardening, people have begun adopting chickens for fresh eggs. For people who have little to no experience raising poultry, University of California Cooperative Extension has care and feeding tips to keep the birds healthy.
UCCE dairy advisor Randi Black and Karen Giovannini, UCCE agriculture ombudsman for Sonoma County, collaborated with UCCE poultry specialist Maurice Pitesky in the School of Veterinary Medicine to create Poultry 101. Their tips for new poultry owners are free at
- Author: Penny Leff
We love to watch our three hens. They roam contentedly now in our Sacramento backyard, eating bugs and greens. We've named them, of course: Blondie, Queenie, and big Lizzy. They are a little flock, raised together since they were day-old hatchlings from the feed store. They're about three years old now, and still laying two or three eggs between them most days, before we let them out of their covered run in the afternoons. Our next-door neighbor has built a coop too, and there's another little flock on the other side of the fence. Our girls even have neighbors to cackle with.
About six months ago we started seeing a problem - pecked eggs! When we went to gather our one, two or three eggs every day from the nesting box inside...
