The Complete Guide to Raising Chickens: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply

by Tara Layman Williams

Properly raised chickens can be a major boon to any household looking to save money on eggs and poultry. The average hen lays 260 eggs per year, which means that with just six chickens, your family could have 1,560, or 130 dozen, eggs a year. Not only can this save your family significant money on groceries, but you can also harvest and sell eggs at farmers markets or local supermarkets. Additionally, you can raise poultry for meat, saving you a weekly trip to your grocer's deli counter. Raising chickens is relatively inexpensive, and they are easy to maintain if you are equipped with the right knowledge. Plus, your family will love having these quirky and fun birds around. With The Complete Guide to Raising Chickens: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply, you can have a happy and healthy flock that provides your family with countless benefits. In this book, you will find comprehensive information on understanding how to raise your new flock, no matter if you live in the city or on a small farm. Starting with the basics, this book begins describing the different goals and reasons you may want to have these birds, whether for eggs, meat, breeding, selling, showing, or just to have them as pets. You will learn how to understand chickens and how to decide which breed to purchase depending on your needs, as well as where to purchase your chickens and handle them. After reading this book, you will know what your chickens will need and how to take care of them so you can meet your goals for the birds.You will learn what kind of housing your chickens need, including everything from runs and bedding to lighting, perches, and nesting boxes. Once you are an expert on chicken coops, you will explore the proper methods and forms of feed each breed needs. This book provides details on how to breed chickens for egg production and how to collect and store the eggs, while additional information is included on how to manage your breeders and hatch eggs. This book covers the entire lifespan of the chicken, including hatching, egg cultivation, mating, and slaughter. Additionally, you will rarely have to call the vet with this book's information on chicken health and anatomy.We interviewed top chicken farms and experts for this book, and their expertise and experience is compiled in this book to provide practical information on maintaining chicken health, how different seasons affect chicken care, and how to raise chickens for meat. The Complete Guide to Raising Chickens is the perfect guide for any new chicken farmer to have in hand.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 2010

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough guide to all things chicken, whether it's advising on first steps for beginners or helping the more experienced owner with questions, this covers everything you might need to know for raising chickens as pets, layers, show birds or for meat. There's advice on choosing breeds, on deciding whether to start with chicks, eggs or pullets, on common chicken health issues, on building or buying chicken coops, even butchering. (Some of you may wish to skip that section.)

The advice is straightforward and well-presented.

An excellent reference book for anyone raising chickens, or wanting to know more about what's involved.

[raccoon reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book for first time (and any time really) chicken owners. It's one of those books that has the right mix of everything. It had more historical background on chickens at the beginning which I found fascinating. It had lots of up to date online info even though the book was published 2 years ago. Maybe the online chicken world doesn't change much ;) It also had the right amount of manageable information (no info overload or too little) on other areas concerning the chicken.

Regardless I *loved* this book and would highly recommend it. It felt more useful and practical to me after I already had the chickens in place. It answered almost all of the instant questions I had from day to day. It's time to give it back to the library though. It might be one worth keeping as reference if you're not a major library user but for most of us I think just reading it will be fine. I do think everyone should have at least one reference book on chickens at all time or a few good sites to go to because you will have tons of questions over the course of raising your flock.

Happy farming,
Gina

[Nina Hoppe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great information and well organized book on everything you need to know about chickens. I really appreciated the lists of websites with the chapters.

[Jensownzoo · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a book written in somewhat of a conversational style, making it very accessible to the layperson. HOWEVER, it was also filled with inconsistencies in the facts, imprecise language (that I could see leading to misunderstandings), and a need for a copy editor. The saving grace of this book is that it included a lot of references to online resources for chicks/eggs, supplies, and information. This book would also have benefited from referential pictures throughout the text (instead of colored pictures grouped in the center), especially in the anatomy section.

So, what I'm saying is don't buy this book. You should be able to find the internet resources yourself, which will likely be much more helpful.