Ussery - The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers

Harvey Ussery has spent a lifetime developing and showcasing a truly viable poultry model that is ultimately carbon-sequestering, hygienic, neighbor-friendly, and food-secure.... This book is about a call to heritage, to the wisest of wise traditions in food security and relationships. Harvey brings the latest tools and practices within the grasp of any aspiring flockster. It is this functional spirit that will make this book a classic in the small-scale poultry rearing genre.

From the foreword by Joel Salatin, Polyface, Inc.

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock is the only complete guide available to using your poultry as an integrated part of a self-reliant farmsteada topic not addressed at this depth and breadth in any other poultry book. Author Harvey Ussery combines his clear, down-to-earth writing style with creative strategies throughout. He comprehensively explores a wide range of topics including chicken behavior, anatomy, holistic health care, making your own poultry feeds and finding alternative home feeds, breeding your own poultry stock, butchering poultry, and much more. This book covers it all.

Elaine Belanger, editor of Backyard Poultry magazine

Harvey Ussery delivers all the practical information you need to grow your own eggs-and-meat birds, in a style and format that will keep you interested and amused. Plus, he raises the larger question: What kind of world do we want to live in? One that treats animals as units of production, or one that honors all life, especially that farmstead marvel, the domesticated chicken?

Sally Fallon Morell, president, The Weston A. Price Foundation

Usserys outstanding book is certain to withstand the test of time both for its encyclopedic and practical information and for its acknowledgment that the future of our culture and our food security is in the hands of the small farmer and backyard producer. If you are starting out with your first flock, this is your book. And when youve been keeping poultry for 30+ years, this will still be your best book.

Shannon Hayes, author of Radical Homemakers

This book is packed with practical advice on raising poultry by someone who has not only done it all, but has learned from his broad experience and knows how to communicate that wisdom clearly and in a lively, readable style. Harvey Ussery has written one of the most comprehensive guides out there, but what places it above the rest of the crowd is that he shows you how to work with nature rather than against it in ways that will minimize work while ensuring the health and happiness of the flock. Whether youre a beginner or an old-time poultry farmer, you shouldnt go any further without this excellent manual.

Toby Hemenway, author of Gaias Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

There is a revolution going on, and it is the popular return of keeping poultry to provide food for our home tables. This book helps lead the way by integrating the small flock with its natural environment: the homestead, or small farm. Nowhere else will you find such valuable information on putting poultry to work in the garden, producing much of their feed, and producing healthful food for ourselves.

Don Schrider, author of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancys Chicken Assessment for Improving Productivity and Storeys Guide to Raising Turkeys (Second Edition)

Anyone interested in practical, experienced, insightful information about how to select, breed, care for, manage, feed, protect, process, eat, and/or market small-scale or personal poultry flocks for their own eating pleasure or selling to othersand have funshould read this book. Frederick Kirschenmann, author of Cultivating an Ecological Conscience

Heres the ultimate book for those who want to know everything there is to know about raising poultry.... I could not findin this encyclopedic array of chicken know-howone detail that I would quibble with.

Gene Logsdon, author of Holy Shit and The Contrary Farmer

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock is about establishing a free-range poultry flock fully integrated into a healthy homestead ecosystem. Based upon the authors decades of hands-on experience with many breeds and species, it covers all the basics about raising poultry, and fills some important gaps not usually covered well enough elsewhere, including chicken behavior, poultry breeding, raising chicks with broody hens, managing free-ranging, dealing with predators, using electric net fencing, feeding poultry with home-grown feeds, and integrating the poultry with soil mineral balance, gardens, lawns and pastures, orchards, worm bins, and soldier fly (larvae) production. If you want to raise chickens and can afford just one book, I recommend this one. Carol Deppe, author of The Resilient Gardener

No other book on small-scale poultry provides so integrated an approach to issues of soil health, home economy, resource conservation, food quality, and animal welfare. Harvey Usserys tireless passion for experimentation and empirical observation offers a wealth of information based on decades of first-hand experience. This is the big picture of poultry; no homesteader or backyard chicken enthusiast should be without a copy.

Kate Hunter, of livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com

Copyright 2011 by Harvey Ussery.

All rights reserved.

The lyrics from Union Sundown by Bob Dylan on page 312 are copyright 1983 by Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Project Manager: Patricia Stone

Developmental Editor: Makenna Goodman

Copy Editor: Laura Jorstad

Proofreader: Eileen M. Clawson

Indexer: Shana Milkie

Designer: Peter Holm, Sterling Hill Productions

All photographs by Harvey Ussery, unless otherwise credited.

Chapter 20 opening image by Auke-Bonne van der Weide, .

Figures 28.7-28.36 by Mike Focazio.

Illustrations by Elayne Sears, unless otherwise credited.

DISCLAIMER: Information offered in this book is based on decades of research and practical experience. However, the author is not a trained professional in any health, environmental, or other field; neither he nor the publisher is responsible for the consequences of the application of any information or ideas presented herein.

Printed in the United States of America

First printing September, 2011

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Our Commitment to Green Publishing

Chelsea Green sees publishing as a tool for cultural change and ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book manufacturing practices with our editorial mission and to reduce the impact of our business enterprise in the environment. We print our books and catalogs on chlorine-free recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks whenever possible. This book may cost slightly more because we use recycled paper, and we hope youll agree that its worth it. Chelsea Green is a member of the Green Press Initiative ( www.greenpressinitiative.org ), a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the worlds endangered forests and conserve natural resources. TheSmall-Scale Poultry Flock was printed on FSC-certified paper supplied by RR Donnelley that contains at least 10-percent postconsumer recycled fiber.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data