Meet your teacher
Hi, I’m Krystal.
I’m a Nova Scotia chicken keeper, educator, and the person behind Feathered Fundamentals.
I started keeping chickens at our homestead, Westholme, in 2022. Things escalated rather quickly. I now care for 31 hens, five roosters, and two geese living in a chicken village made up of eleven coops and runs.
Most days, I’m somewhere outside checking birds, cleaning coops, building or repairing something, researching a chicken problem, or sitting near the coops with a cup of coffee while the geese chew on me like I’m a snack.
Lessons From the Flock
Caring for a large flock means encountering far more than eggs and cute chicken noises.
Over the years, I’ve worked through injuries, respiratory illness, reproductive problems, parasites, bumblefoot, crop issues, frostbite, flock conflict, broody hens, temporary house chickens, and quite a few situations I had never expected when I brought home my first birds.
Every one of those experiences pushed me to learn more. I wanted to understand what was happening, why it was happening, and how to make better decisions the next time.
That combination of daily flock care, research, and problem solving shapes everything I teach through Feathered Fundamentals.
How I Learn
I spend an ridiculous amount of time researching poultry health and behavior.
I’ve completed several chicken care courses and built a growing reference library that includes poultry veterinary textbooks, chicken health manuals, and other trusted resources. I also created Clara, my private research assistant, to help me search and work with that library more effectively.
I’m not a veterinarian, and I’m careful not to present myself as one. My role is to help chicken keepers understand their birds, find reliable information, make informed decisions, and recognize when a problem needs professional veterinary care.
What you can expect from me
I don’t expect you to memorize everything or arrive already knowing the basics.
I explain why things matter, how the different parts of chicken keeping connect, and what the information looks like when you apply it to an actual flock. We talk about the enjoyable parts, the expensive parts, the messy parts, and the difficult decisions that eventually come with caring for living animals.
Questions are welcome throughout the workshop. If something is confusing, we slow down and talk it through.
My goal is for you to leave understanding your chickens better and feeling more prepared to make decisions for them.
Why Feathered Fundamentals Exists
When I started keeping chickens, useful information was scattered everywhere. Some advice was reliable, some was repeated without explanation, and some was completely contradictory.
I created Feathered Fundamentals to give new chicken keepers the kind of beginning I wish I had. It brings the important information together in one place, adds the local details that broad online advice often misses, and gives you someone to ask when the internet produces five different answers to one question.
It is practical chicken education built from real flock experience, careful research, and everything I wish someone had explained before the chickens took over my life.
