Back in 1999 a few baby chicks were brought home from a kindergarten class. Similar to the experience of hundreds of thousands of other children and their families, what started out as a fun project turned into a hobby and then into an obsession! BackYardChickens is the result of years of collective learning and fun rolled up into the best resource for raising your own backyard flock.
Over the past few years there has been a resurgence in people who want to be more “green”, more self-sufficient, and take part in the “grow local” movement. A handful of egg-laying hens in a relatively small yard allows people to participate in these trends without having to move or change their lifestyle. BackYardChickens.com promotes the green, self-sufficient, and grow-local movements by educating people on how to raise chickens properly.
As the content of the site has grown so have the visits to the site and with visitors came questions... lots of questions. Everything from "How to raise chickens?" and "How to hatch eggs?" to "How do I build a chicken coop?" and "How do I keep my chickens healthy?". We tried to answer as many questions as we could by adding information to the site but we realized there were too many different variables to create content for every situation. So, back in 2000 we started the first Chicken Forum. Over the years this forum has grown, moved, changed, moved again, and continued to grow and develop based on the needs of the site visitors. At the time of updating this page, June 2017, BYC has a vibrant community of more than 325,000 chicken owners who add about 6,000 new posts per DAY (on average 5 new posts every minute of every day, 24/7)!
The growth in the trend toward raising backyard chickens and the quantity and quality of information gathered on the site have greatly exceeded any of the original expectations. BYC now boasts over 2,500 chicken coop designs, an extensive chicken breed database, and an amazing raising chickens learning center. The site has become the # 1 resource for everyone interested in raising, breeding and caring for their own flock of backyard chickens.
BYC is managed by Rob Ludlow, co-author of the books Raising Chickens for Dummies & Building Chicken Coops for Dummies. The vast amount of content and the vibrant community is the result of over 14 years of contributions by tens of thousands of people and the dedication of the world’s best group of moderators. You can read a more detailed journal of events regarding to the history of BYC by clicking: History Of BackYardChickens
Enjoy your time here! If you have comments or questions, turn to the Chicken Forum - it's one of the friendliest message boards around and you will get a LOT of great answers to any questions you may have.