A good duck house does four things: it keeps rain and cold out, holds heat in without trapping damp, keeps raccoons and foxes on the outside, and gives every bird enough floor space that they are not sleeping on top of each other. Most prefab products fall short on the fourth one. We compared ten … Read more
The rabbit hutch market has a problem, and experienced keepers on r/Rabbits and the RabbitRehome forums say so plainly: most mass-market hutches are sold as full-time outdoor housing when they are really only a secure sleeping box. We spent weeks reading thousands of reviews on the twelve listings below, checking what owners report after rain, … Read more
Most quail keepers who regret an incubator regret the same thing: they bought a big cabinet for a clutch of eight eggs. If you want a unit sized for small hatches, the Brinsea Mini II Advance is the one we would put on the counter first, because it takes 12 small eggs with the optional … Read more
The best automatic chicken waterers for winter are electrically heated waterers with a built-in thermostat that switches on near 35F, because they hold water above its 32F freezing point through sustained hard freezes. In mild climates that only see occasional frost, an insulated non-electric waterer handles most nights without a power cord. That is the … Read more
If you have ever scrubbed algae out of a chicken fount at 6am, you already know why the best nipple waterers for chicken coops have taken over most backyard coops. A nipple waterer is a sealed bucket, tote, or pipe with small spring-loaded fittings drilled into its sides or bottom, so your birds tap a … Read more
If you have ever found a cracked egg under a hen who was sitting on three others, you already know the problem a roll-away tray solves. The best chicken nesting boxes with roll away trays use a gently sloped compartment floor so each egg rolls forward into a covered pull-out tray, away from the hen’s … Read more
Chickens do not eat neatly. Even a well-behaved flock pulls feed out of an open trough, rakes it across the run with a sideward sweep of the beak, and loses most of it to dirt. The best poultry feeders for reducing waste are the ones that make that sweeping motion physically pointless: a treadle feeder … Read more
A broody hen coop is a small, secure, ground-level enclosure that isolates a nesting hen from the rest of the flock so she can sit on fertile eggs through the roughly 21-day incubation and then raise the resulting chicks safely. That is the whole job. Everything else is detail. The reason this matters is simple: … Read more
Which garden cart is the best? For most homesteads the default answer is a 600 lb poly dump cart: it moves bagged soil, compost, feed and firewood in a single trip, it will not rust in a wet barn, and it unloads with one hand on a lever. When your loads are heavier or longer … Read more
A plyo box, short for plyometric box, is a raised platform used to train explosive leg power at home. The classic exercises are box jumps, step-ups and box squats, and most models give you three jump heights from one object. We reviewed ten of them for this guide to the best plyo boxes for home … Read more