Your hands-on guide to modern chicken-raising methods

Thinking about raising chickens? You’ve come to the right place! This new edition of Raising Chickens For Dummies provides the most up-to-date, thorough information on the many aspects of keeping chickens in your backyard. Inside, you’ll find hands-on, easy-to-follow instructions on choosing and purchasing chickens, constructing housing for your birds, feeding your chickens for optimal health, combating laying issues, controlling pests and predators, optimizing egg production, and much more.

Raising chickens on a small scale is a popular―and growing―pastime. If you’re interested in keeping chickens as pets or as a source for eggs, Raising Chickens For Dummies gives you plain-English explanations of everything you need to know to about caring for chickens. Inside, you’ll learn about basic chicken biology, breeds, and behavior, which chicken breed is best for you, how many you need, ways to spot healthy chickens, how to build a chicken coop, best practices for mating your chickens, how to incubate eggs, how to hatch and nurture chicks, manage laying hens, collect and store eggs, and butcher meat birds.

• Offers practical advice on choosing and purchasing chickens

• Helps you construct the right housing for your chickens

• Provides tips on feeding and caring for your chickens

• Includes top tips for raising healthy chickens

Whether you’re a first-time poulterer or you’ve been raising chickens for years, this comprehensive guideprovides practical how-to advice for keeping chickens in virtually any backyard.

From the Back Cover

Learn:

• Which Breeds Fit Your Specific Needs

• To Custom Create Your Own Coop

• The Latest Urban Farming Trends

• To Raise Happy, Healthy Chickens

Your trusted resource on modern chicken-raising methods

This hands-on guide offers the most up-to-date information on chicken care, from feeding your birds for optimal health to controlling pests and predators―and everything in between. Whether you’re a first-time poulterer or you-ve been raising chickens for years, you-ll find fast, authoritative advice for keeping chickens in virtually any backyard.

• What the cluck? ― get the lowdown on basic chicken biology and behavior, get to know the different types of chicken breeds, and find guidance on buying chickens

• Coop, sweet coop ― choose the best housing type for your flock, design and construct a coop, make nests comfy and cozy, and properly dispose of manure and old bedding

• Keep ’em happy and healthy ― select a form of feed, keeps pests from infesting the coop, fend off predators, and handle common health problems

• The chicken or the egg ― find out how to safely mate your chickens, incubate eggs and hatch chicks, and expertly care for those fluffy balls of cuteness

• Beyond the coop ― discover how to humanely raise meat birds, whether you’re doing the deed yourself or hiring out a butcher

Open the book and find:

• The best laying breeds and the best breeds for the table

• Ways to supplement feed with grit

• How to recognize and deal with disease

• What you need to know about the stages of growth ― from chick to adult

• Steps for collecting, cleaning, and storing eggs

• How to package and store home-butchered poultry

• Tips for keeping healthy, stress-free chickens

About the Author

Kimberley Willis has raised numerous breeds of chickens and other poultry for eggs, meat, and showing for more than 40 years.

Robert T. Ludlow owns and manages BackYardChickens.com, the largest and fastest-growing community of chicken enthusiasts in the world.