Atlantic Publishing Co. - The Art of Small-Scale Farming with Chickens

A few years back we lost our beloved pet dog Bear, who was not only our best and dearest friend but also the Vice President of Sunshine here at Atlantic Publishing. He did not receive a salary but worked tirelessly 24 hours a day to please his parents.

Bear was a rescue dog who turned around and showered myself, my wife, Sherri, his grandparents Jean, Bob, and Nancy, and every person and animal he met (well, maybe not rabbits) with friendship and love. He made a lot of people smile every day.

We wanted you to know a portion of the profits of this book will be donated in Bears memory to local animal shelters, parks, conservation organizations, and other individuals and nonprofit organizations in need of assistance.

Douglas and Sherri Brown

PS: We have since adopted two more rescue dogs: first Scout, and the following year, Ginger. They were both mixed golden retrievers who needed a home.

Want to help animals and the world? Here are a dozen easy suggestions you and your family can implement today:

• Adopt and rescue a pet from a local shelter.
• Support local and no-kill animal shelters.
• Plant a tree to honor someone you love.
• Be a developer put up some birdhouses.
• Buy live, potted Christmas trees and replant them.
• Make sure you spend time with your animals each day.
• Save natural resources by recycling and buying recycled products.
• Drink tap water, or filter your own water at home.
• Whenever possible, limit your use of or do not use pesticides.
• If you eat seafood, make sustainable choices.
• Support your local farmers market.
• Get outside. Visit a park, volunteer, walk your dog, or ride your bike.

Five years ago, Atlantic Publishing signed the Green Press Initiative. These guidelines promote environmentally friendly practices, such as using recycled stock and vegetable-based inks, avoiding waste, choosing energy-efficient resources, and promoting a no-pulping policy. We now use 100-percent recycled stock on all our books. The results: in one year, switching to post-consumer recycled stock saved 24 mature trees, 5,000 gallons of water, the equivalent of the total energy used for one home in a year, and the equivalent of the greenhouse gases from one car driven for a year.

Introduction

This book will help you get off on the right foot in establishing a small-scale farm of chickens. You will learn how to prepare for and choose healthy chickens before you bring them home to your farm. Once you have your livestock, you will learn how to recognize the signs of an ill animal and how to treat them. In order to properly use your investment, you will learn how to harvest, market your livestock, and butcher your own meat. In a nutshell, you will learn the ins and outs of livestock farming from experts and pros in the business. But as with most things, you will learn best by doing. Most likely, you will experience a few setbacks your first year or two. With practice, research, and determination, your foray into small-scale farming with chickens will be a fun and rewarding experience for you and your family.

Before you embark on a small-scale enterprise, do your research. Research the breeds available, the equipment needed, the physical labor requirements, and equally important the markets available to sell the products your livestock produce. You will have to ask yourself some tough questions. To begin, do you have the resources to finance a livestock enterprise? Can you physically handle the species you would like to raise? Is there a reliable source of feed near your farm? Is there an available, nearby market for your product, or do you have to create a market? This little book can help answer these questions and more. These are just a few of the many questions you need to seriously contemplate before you make a single purchase related to small-scale farming. Instead of jumping into a larger-scale operation, you might want to start small to make sure you enjoy working with the chickens. Do not invest a lot of money until you are absolutely certain this is something you would like to do as a business or to provide your family.

However, do not let these precautions dissuade you from attempting to raise chickens on your farm. As long as you go in clear-eyed and levelheaded with reasonable expectations, you just might find raising chickens will suit you just fine. As you will see from some of the case studies in this book, farming is a family affair, and children can become just as invested as adults in rearing animals.

If you are interested in small-scale farming with other types of livestock, be sure to check out the other books in this series:

The Art of Small Scale Farming with Ducks and Geese: A Little Book Full of All the Information You Need