Kathy Shea Mormino - The Chicken Chicks Guide to Backyard Chickens: Simple Steps for Healthy, Happy Hens

I hope that you experience years of enjoyment from your chickens personalities, social interactions, and beauty, and that you will share your enthusiasm for them with friends and family.

Caring for these peculiar animals is a little less intuitive than cats or dogs. When we keep uncommon pets without access to experienced veterinarians, we find ourselves at the mercy of free information. As backyard chicken keeping has grown in popularity, so has a small industry willing to take your money in exchange for products and information of dubious benefit and safety. Healthy pet chickens do not need gimmicks or a steady supply of supplements, herbs, or additives to be healthy or to improve the quality of their eggs, their plumage, their immune systems, or their happiness.

I want to help you become an educated consumer of chicken-care information and products to protect your flock and your wallet. My hope is that you will ask questions and demand answers supported by evidence and not allow buzzword-loaded rhetoric cloaked in feel-good terms like natural and herbal obscure common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Chickens are best served by keeping their care simple: provide them with a complete commercial feed, clean water in clean containers, plenty of clean, dry living space, and good biosecurity (see ).

In the pages that follow, I do not tackle the advantages and disadvantages of every flock management issue or predicament a chicken keeper might face. This is not a book about raising meat birds, showing chickens, or breeding flocks. Its not a how-to guide for starting a commercial poultry farm, a manual for commercial egg sales, or a handbook detailing every possible ghastly disease. Rather, my intention is to provide enough guidance to help you avoid painful learning curves and make informed decisions for your chickens.

Where generalizations are made, I invite you to apply common sense to extrapolate the obvious exceptions. There are few hard-and-fast rules for correct methods; along the way, you will find what works for you and change your tack as you become more knowledgeable and experienced.

I hope that you experience years of enjoyment from your chickens personalities, social interactions, and beauty, and that you will share your enthusiasm for them with friends and family.

Maybe youll even inspire a few new chickeneers along the way!

First Things First

WHY KEEP CHICKENS?

FRANKLY, WHY NOT KEEP CHICKENS? WHY MUST
there be a statement of intent when it comes to raising chickens? Nobody ever asks, Why keep a dog?

Raising chickens is a hobby teeming with unique rewards, but there are several factors to consider before taking the plunge into backyard chicken keeping. The hens in the front row are a Columbian Wyandotte and Barred Plymouth Rock. Hens in back are, from left, a Black Copper Marans x Wheaten Marans, a Partridge Plymouth Rock, and a Partridge Cochin.

Clean eggs fresh from the nest boxes are more beautiful, flavorful, and often more nutritious than their store-bought counterparts.

Although there are many good reasons to keep chickens, there is certainly no deep, philosophical rationale or altruistic objective required. Not only do chickens produce nutritious food and valuable garden fertilizer, but they also offer chemical-free pest control, educational opportunities, and the most unexpected benefit: a capacity to enrich the lives of their caretakers. Chickens are the new family dog.

Fresh Eggs from Humanely Raised Hens

Home-raised hens living in spacious, clean conditions with access to fresh air and grass to graze produce eggs that are fresher, better tasting, and often more nutritious than their commercially farmed counterparts. Raising chickens also promotes the humane treatment of food-producing animals and a local, sustainable food system.

Pets, Companions, and Therapy Animals

Companionship, entertainment, stress reduction, and comic relief set todays chickens apart from our forebears flocks. They are not relegated to the Sunday soup pot when they are injured any more than we would think to eat our dogs or cats. They are appreciated for their distinct personalities and their curious social interactions with each other. Pet chickens are routinely used as therapy animals for individuals with a wide array of emotional, physical, and other life challenges, as well as companion visitors to the elderly in health and retirement facilities.

Education

Too many children suffer the illusions that eggs magically appear in cartons in the supermarket and chickens are nugget-shaped. Backyard chickens provide opportunities for children to understand where food comes from and contribute to its production. Watering, feeding, and egg collecting are all chores children can manage while experiencing valuable life lessons in responsibility, the circle of life, and compassion for animals.

Organic Gardeners and Exterminators

Chickens are green pets! They eat a variety of weeds and problem insects, making backyards and water supplies safer than those where toxic insecticides and pesticides are applied. Given the opportunity, they gladly till, turn, aerate, and enrich gardens with homemade, nitrogen-rich fertilizer.

Are Chickens for Me?