Hen Keeping

A beginner’s guide to keeping hens with info on over fifty breeds, plus housing, feeding, daily care, disease prevention, egg production, breeding, & more. Self-sufficiency and organic living have never been more prevalent than in recent years. Keeping hens is becoming increasingly popular and is one way of ensuring you have fresh produce at your fingertips. This authoritative book introduces some of the key aspects of keeping your own chickens and benefitting from the produce. You don’t need a large garden to keep poultry, and an average family only needs a couple of hens to keep them well stocked in fresh eggs all year round. The set-up costs are minimal, and you don’t need a whole host of expensive gadgets or equipment to get started or care for your chickens. Packed with useful information on poultry keeping (housing, food and water, daily care routines, disease prevention and cure, encouraging egg production, and breeding), this guidebook also features comprehensive information on breeds and a useful list of contacts. “This book provides a good starting place to ensure that you have everything you need to know at your fingertips . . . If your aim is to keep hens for their eggs on a small-scale, then Self-Sufficiency: Hen Keeping should be at the top of your to-read list.” —The Rural

The Homesteader’s Natural Chicken Keeping Handbook is the modern homesteader’s guide to raising, feeding, breeding, selling, and enjoying the noblest animal on the farm—the chicken. From the rooster’s crow in the morning, to the warm egg in the nesting box, chickens are the gateway livestock for almost every homesteader and backyard farm enthusiast. In this book, you’ll learn everything you need to know about raising chickens naturally. Fewell guides you in: understanding why chickens do what they do creating your very own poultry or egg business preventing and treating ailments with herbal remedies setting up your property, coop, and brooder hatching chicks purchasing chickens properly cooking delicious recipes with your farm fresh eggs and poultry. This is heritage chicken keeping skills 101, with a modern twist. Not only will you gain knowledge about naturally keeping chickens through every stage of their lives, but you’ll fully embrace the joy and ease of raising all-natural chickens on your homestead.

Care for your flock with this “practical, common-sense, easy-to-read” guide to chicken keeping, filled with color photos (Michael Darre, PhD, Professor of Poultry Science, University of Connecticut). The Chicken Chick’s Guide to Backyard Chickens takes you through all aspects of small flock care, including feeding, housing, chicken health, and so much more! Known as The Chicken Chick, Kathy Shea Mormino brings her expertise on raising backyard chickens to millions of fans around the world through her wildly popular blog and social media. Now her down-to-earth approach to chicken-keeping is available in book form. Sharing her years of hard-earned experience and collaborations with poultry veterinarians, nutritionists, and professors, she provides simple steps to care for these uncommon pets with confidence. She guides newbie, veteran, and would-be backyard chickeneers through all aspects of small flock care—from getting started to housing, feeding, egg production, health, and beyond.

The Chicken Whisperer’s Guide to Zero-Waste Chicken Keeping is the first book designed to help chicken keepers raise chickens using limited resources while maintaining a low environmental impact. This comprehensive guide, filled with color photos, features valuable tips, tricks, and suggestions from Andy G. Schneider, also known as the Chicken Whisperer. Learn how to reduce waste, re-purpose materials, and recycle what can’t be reused. Discover easy ways to save money, improve production, support sustainability, and use fewer resources overall. In the book you’ll find: Advice for low-waste feeding that includes insights into a variety of food options Practical and simple solutions for dealing with feathers, feed, and droppings Guidelines for building a composting system that offers great opportunities for recycling Information on no-waste coops and brooders Keeping chickens can be rewarding and fruitful. With essential insights and how-to secrets from an expert, it can also be cost effective and environmentally friendly.

Today’s renaissance of the backyard flock is driven by a growing desire for healthy organic ingredients, food security and animal welfare—and while hunger might be “the best sauce,” a dash of self-sufficiency is remarkably satisfying too. As communities from Victoria to St. John’s amend urban bylaws to allow backyard flocks, more and more Canadians are enjoying the pleasures and rewards of keeping hens in the garden. In addition to tending her family’s flock as a child, Signe Langford has kept chickens in her urban Toronto yard for almost a decade. Her book is stuffed full of practical advice on keeping the garden both gorgeous and productive and hens happy and healthy. In addition to answering questions about coop construction, year-round egg production and whether or not a rooster is really needed, she covers the best breeds for backyards—from the Canadian winter-tough Chantecler to peewee bantams to blue-egg producing Ameraucana. A self-admitted “biomass addict,” Langford explains how hens are the happiest garden helpers anyone could ever have. Give them kitchen scraps and let them visit the compost pile: they’ll enrich and aerate the soil, all while eating as many bugs as they can get their beaks on. Langford also shares what plants should be scratched and what to sow to support the flock—from edible flowers and foliage to a hens’ herbal healing bed. In the kitchen, Langford tells why coddling can be a good thing when it comes to eggs; how to salt-cure yolks and how to dash off a classic French omelette baveuse. From Blue Cheese and Caramelized Onion Tart to Vanilla Coeur a la Crème with Blueberry Compote, Langford includes dozens of simple and elegant recipes from her own kitchen, as well as from celebrated contributors like Vikram Vij, Laura Calder, Ted Reader and John Higgins. Illustrated with beautiful photographs, illustrations and garden plans, Happy Hens & Fresh Eggs is sure to become a favourite of avid and aspiring backyard farmers alike.

Got a little space and a hankering for fresh eggs? Robert and Hannah Litt have dispensed advice to hundreds of urban and suburban chicken-keepers from behind their perch at Portland’s Urban Farm Store, and now they’re ready to help you go local and sustainable with your own backyard birds. In this handy guide to breeds, feed, coops, and care, the Litts take you under their experienced wings and share the secrets to: Picking the breeds that are right for you • Building a sturdy coop in one weekend for $100 • Raising happy and hearty chicks • Feeding your flock for optimal health and egg nutrition • Preventing and treating common chicken diseases • Planning ahead for family, neighborhood, and legal considerations • Whipping up tasty egg recipes from flan to frittata With everything that first-timers will need to get started—along with expert tips for more seasoned keepers—this colorful, nuts-and-bolts manual proves that keeping chickens is all it’s cracked up to be.

"Fresh Eggs Daily blogger Steele lays down as many tips and recipes as her chickens do eggs in this innovative and plucky collection.... This will be hard to beat." – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Lisa Steele, fifth-generation chicken keeper and founder of the popular blog Fresh Eggs Daily, knows a thing or two about eggs. And she’s ready to show you just how easy and delicious it can be to make eggs a staple of every meal. First, Lisa will tell you everything you don’t know about eggs—such as what the different labels on grocery store egg cartons mean—and bust some common egg myths. From there, she provides you with foundational techniques for cooking with eggs, including steaming, grilling, baking, and frying. And finally, Lisa shares her go-to recipes for everything from breakfast staples, like eggs Benedict and a classic French trifold “omelette,” to breads, sandwiches, beverages, snacks, soups, salads, pasta, cakes, pies, and condiments. You’ll encounter a wide variety of both sweet and savory dishes with Lisa’s unique twists. Read The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook to discover new and exciting ways to incorporate fresh eggs into your cooking and baking repertoire each and every day.

Beginning and intermediate chicken keepers don’t need to spend hours poring through extensive manuals and thick books—Carissa Bonham boils down chicken-keeping basics into 101 easy-to-understand and easy-to-apply tips, tricks, and chicken hacks. Advice ranges from learning how to grow your flock despite having a broody hen to directions for making a nesting box herb blend that will keep pests at bay and keep the coop smelling fresh. Other tips will touch on: • Waiting for info from author • Waiting for info from author • Waiting for info from author • And much more! Having raised a variety of chickens both inside her home and with the help of broody chicken moms, author Carissa Bonham is ready to share her chicken-keeping advice with others looking to add the joy of poultry to their lives. Her approach to chicken keeping focuses on keeping hens happy using natural methods so you can spend less time doing the dirty work and more time enjoying your flock.