Our Top 5 Chicken Keepers Books
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Chicken Books
Overview:
This book, the latest innovative Haynes Manual, will provide a complete and easy-to-understand reference for the growing band of people wishing to keep their own chickens for both food and pleasure. Pitched at the novice but also containing plenty to interest the experienced chicken-keeper, the book will contain no-nonsense advice, tips, facts and step-by step sequences, as well as plenty of relevant photographs and diagrams. As more people keep chickens nowadays than at any time since the Second World War, this book is a timely addition to the Haynes range.
Our Review:
The ‘Chicken Manual’ has excellent descriptions and a clear layout making information easy to visualise and extract. We would recommend this book to the beginner chicken keeper and for the more experienced. Section 5 on health problems was brilliant, allowing many common problems to be diagnosed and solved at home.
Chicken Manual: The Complete Step-by-step
Guide to Keeping Chickens
Keeping Chickens For Dummies (UK Edition)
Guide to Keeping Chickens
Overview
Whatever your reasons for wanting to make chickens part of your life, the best way to get started is with Keeping Chickens For Dummies your one–stop guide to choosing, housing, feeding, breeding, showing, selling and tending most common varieties of gallus domesticus.
Get up to speed with chickens 101 immerse yourself in crucial chicken facts and figures, from basic biology and behaviours to common breeds and their varying requirements
Our Review:
We love the ‘For Dummies’ range and this is another comprehensive book. It is clearly laid out and easy to access. The book is full of great tips, and clear instructions, while being divided into clear separate sections. We would recommend this book to the beginner to novice chicken keeper.
Overview
In the last few years, poultry-keeping has enjoyed massive growth, with heavy TV coverage featuring chefs such as Jamie Oliver. It is another symptom of our weariness of mass-produced, tasteless supermarket food - the appeal of being able to nip into the back garden to get fresh eggs for breakfast, knowing that the hens have been well kept, fed and loved. This highly practical book is aimed at beginners to the hobby and will explain everything you need to know to get started keeping chickens, from how to choose, house, feed and handle them to how many eggs they will lay, their affect on the local ecosystem and protection from foxes.
Keeping Chickens
(Green Guides)
Our Review:
This is a very good book for anyone who needs to learn the basic care of chickens. We found the book easy to read and understand while covering all the basic such as which breed to buy, food, health, and hen house.
We would recommend this book to the beginner chicken keeper.
Feeding your Chickens
Feeding chickens is the largest continuous financial outlay to keeping chickens. Food bought in bulk can reduce this outlay. When buying in bulk it is important to ensure that the food is kept in a cool dry environment to stop the food from spoiling.
The type of feed also varies with age of the chicken, from hatching to around 8 weeks, chicks are fed on ‘starter crumbs’ or 'starter feed' or 'mash' (referring to how it is ground down).
These have high protein to help the growth of the chicks and are small in size.
Similarly as your chickens grow older the choice of feed is important to maintain healthy chickens.
One thing to note regarding chicks, that if you've had your chicks vaccinated against Coccidiosis, they'll need an un-medicated feed. If they have not been vaccinated, or if you've only had them vaccinated for Marek's Disease, medicated feed is a great way to keep them healthy those first few months.
