My Pet Chicken Handbook: Sensible Advice and Savvy Answers for Raising Backyard Chickens: A Guide to Raising Chickens
256
My Pet Chicken Handbook: Sensible Advice and Savvy Answers for Raising Backyard Chickens: A Guide to Raising Chickens
256eBook
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Overview
Backyard chickens are the new “it” pet—and with good reason! They’re personable, cheerful, beautiful, and (mostly!) low maintenance. But they’re not without their quirks and their sometimes puzzling behaviors that cause concern for chicken-keeping newbies and veterans alike. Let the experts at My Pet Chicken guide you to a successful chicken-keeping experience with their insightful advice, unique problem-solving approach, and sunny-side-up outlook.
My Pet Chicken Handbook helps you make “expert” choices from the beginning, including whether chickens are right for you and, if they are, how you can avoid the most common “oh-no” experiences. You’ll find detailed care instructions for chickens of all ages, from baby chicks to mature adults, to help ensure a friendly flock and a relaxing hobby. Becoming a responsible chicken parent is a breeze when you discover how to choose the best breed for your needs, understand what type of coop is right for your situation, plan a daily routine, learn about biosecurity practices, and recognize signs of distress. Once your pet chickens start laying, you’ll find more than 50 delicious recipes that feature freshly collected eggs and, as a bonus, you’ll have tons of fun making nutritious special treats for your favorite pet chickens.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781623360023 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Harmony/Rodale |
| Publication date: | 02/04/2014 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 15 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Traci Torres is the CEO and cofounder of My Pet Chicken. She has been passionate about chickens ever since “Goldie” peeped out of her shell during a third-grade classroom hatching experiment. She still considers herself a “wannabe” farmer and aims to one day steward a veritable Noah’s ark of creatures. For now, she contents herself with chickens of all varieties, sizes, and provenances. She lives in rural Connecticut, along with her husband and two children.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHICKENS
It probably comes as no surprise to hear that chickens came here shortly after the arrival of the first English settlers at Jamestown. And much has changed with chickens and the business of chickens over a few hundred years.
Even then, chickens were more of a sideline than a business or vocation. They weren't exactly regarded as farm animals—not in the same way cattle or horses were. Unlike those animals, chickens took up little space and required minimal care. Chickens were kept in small flocks, so it was usually very much a family affair. For instance, it was traditionally the job of the youngest child to gather the daily eggs, and, for the most part, the family chickens were managed by mom rather than dad. Extra eggs were sold at the market for "egg money," a little supplemental income for mom, in addition to the fresh eggs provided for the family.
In America, chickens were historically more of a hobby—and they were a very American hobby, at that. For example, Thomas Jefferson gifted his favorite granddaughter with a pair of bantams for her pleasure. Teddy Roosevelt owned a one-legged rooster, and his children had pet hens with names like Fierce and Baron Spreckle. It's only been recently that chickens have gotten a bad reputation. Among some people, they are regarded as dumb or dirty birds. However, nothing could be further from the truth, though it's not hard to figure out where these erroneous ideas came from if you look at the conditions in factory farms today. Certainly, if it were permissible to keep dogs or cats (or any animal) in similar conditions, our ideas of their intelligence and cleanliness would be different as well.
But the reputation of chickens was once quite different—in the past, they were symbols of goodness and bravery. In medieval times, for instance, the call of a rooster was thought to drive away demons and devils. Chickens have been variously considered symbols of pride, fertility, and even enlightenment, being heralds of the dawn. Roosters faithfully announced the break of day, so sunlight would illuminate the world and send evil and darkness slipping off into the shadows. A rooster was the model of an excellent father and, in fact, a symbol of fatherhood: He was vigilant in protection of his family, genteel in demeanor, and a generous provider. After all, when a rooster finds a choice morsel of food, he calls his family to the feast, letting the hens eat first while he watches for danger and keeps the peace. Roosters are even graceful dancers; consider the elegant sweep of a rooster's extended wing as he moves in circles around a hen he's trying to charm.
It wasn't only roosters that were esteemed, though. Hens were also admired—symbolic of courage, self-sacrifice, and domestic virtue. Jesus compared himself gathering the tribes of Israel to a mother hen gathering chicks under her wings. Hens sit faithfully for weeks on the nest to hatch their eggs, barely eating or drinking until their little chicks have emerged. Then, there are 5 to 6 weeks more of care until the young birds are ready to be on their own. For good reason, hens were regarded as faithful, protective mothers—the epitome of tenderness and motherly love. In fact, the Greek historian Plutarch described the hen in this way: "What of the hens whom we observe each day at home, with what care and assiduity they govern and guard their chicks? Some let down their wings for the chicks to come under; others arch their backs for them to climb upon. There is no part of their bodies with which they do not wish to cherish their chicks if they can, nor do they do this without a joy and alacrity which they seem to exhibit by the sound of their voices."
Even chicken eggs were symbols of rebirth and the cycle of life. In many cultures they were decorated in the springtime, joyously sought and found, a herald also of the returning plenty that came with the change of seasons. People have been delighting in chickens for thousands of years.
For early American settlers, chickens were a great family hobby. You didn't have to live on a farm to keep chickens. Cows, horses, goats, and other livestock required large amounts of open pasture and a lot of work and expense. By contrast, chickens could live in a small yard. They cost little, and they required little effort. They would eat grains dropped by other animals or scraps from the kitchen, so they reduced waste. They even cut down on the insect population in their immediate vicinity with their sharp-eyed bug hunting. They were self-sufficient to a large extent, and often—although we don't recommend this today—the family chickens weren't even provided with a coop or other housing (like a barn). They simply roosted in trees or wherever they could, left to avoid predators on their own—or not.
That's how it was for chickens in the early years of the United States.
THE CHICKEN CRAZE BEGINS
In the early to mid-1800s, for the first time, a breed of chickens known as Cochins was imported from China, and these appealing, fat, fluffy balls of feathers created a sensation. Compared to the flighty, quick birds most families kept for eggs, Cochins seemed as docile as kittens, and they were beautiful, too, with elaborately feathered legs and silver-laced, blue, and mottled colors. They made exceptional mothers that were also calm and easy to handle, so the chicks they raised were often especially docile, too.
In short order, everyone wanted Cochins. But Cochins couldn't really be kept in the same catch-as-catch-can way that other chickens were being kept at the time. For one thing, their ponderous size made it improbable, if not impossible, for them to be able to roost high up in trees and nimbly avoid predators on their own. For another, their profusely feathered legs could be problematic in muddy environments. And lastly, they were expensive in comparison to other chickens, so there was more of a desire to provide housing and security for the rare, new China Cochins.
As the first real exhibition chickens in the United States, Cochins set off a craze for poultry exhibition that has continued to this day. Professional farmers began getting involved with chickens, using selective breeding to create chickens with fancy feathering: crests, beards, feathered legs, and unusual plumage. However, chickens bred in this way didn't necessarily breed true; offspring might be completely different in character from their parents. With no breeding standards, there could be no real breeds like there are today. Establishing a new breed is a complex process. Once you have produced a stable cross, other breeders must show interest and standards (what the bird should look like) must be agreed on. In the early 19th century, those standards did not exist yet.
THE MODERN CHICKEN
The advent of modern poultry keeping resulted from a few different things happening at once, most notably the creation of the American Poultry Association (APA) in 1873. The APA began standardizing breeds, so that to be called a "breed," a chicken would have to be able to produce the same type of bird in future generations. This meant that someone buying chickens could be reasonably assured of the type of chickens he'd see in future generations, and could choose breeds based on qualities needed, such as cold hardiness, productivity, or early maturity. This was also the year that the first artificial incubator was patented—so chicks could now be hatched in quantity.
Once there were standard breeds as well as a way to produce chickens in quantity, the chicken world was transformed. More people had access to keeping chickens, since hatching chicks no longer relied so much on Mother Nature. You didn't need broody hens to hatch eggs (broodiness could even be bred out, if desired). These changes also made it possible for chicken and egg businesses to grow substantially. Today, a single commercial incubator can hatch many thousands of chicks--a vast difference from the measly dozen or so eggs at a time a broody hen can hatch.
Other changes followed soon after: Mass transportation allowed baby chicks to be shipped by train as early as the 1890s, and hatcheries began springing up all over the country. Farmers could order chickens "designed" to mature quickly and lay lots of eggs, and hobbyists could branch out into rare and fancy breeds they'd been coveting for years simply because there was better access to them. But while improved transportation helped the hobby, it also enabled chicken keeping to take its first steps toward becoming a large-scale agribusiness.
Egg businesses were now able to order hundreds and thousands of baby chicks. And because of this, the birds began to be kept in different conditions. After all, when you have a flock of hundreds or thousands rather than just 20 or 30, your chickens will need much more space than what had been dedicated to small hobby flocks to allow them to forage enough to sustain themselves. And since the leftover table scraps of a family of four (or six or 10) wouldn't do much to supplement the foraging of that many birds, commercial chicken feed was developed, and it was formulated to keep chickens well nourished and maximize the number of eggs they could lay. Around the turn of the 20th century, chickens laid only about 30 eggs per year. Now, good layers are expected to produce around 200 to 250 eggs per year—seven to eight times as many. The selective breeding and the improved nutrition are paying off.
Table of Contents
Introduction viii
Part 1 Planning for Chickens Like an Expert 1
Chapter 1 A Brief History of Chickens 2
Chapter 2 The Backyard Chicken Boom 9
Chapter 3 Choosing Backyard Breeds 14
Chapter 4 Truth in (Chicken) Advertising 28
Part 2 Practical Housing Arrangements 53
Chapter 5 Flock-Management Styles 54
Chapter 6 The Brooder and Coop 66
Chapter 7 Predators and Pests 80
Part 3 Starting and Caring for Your Flock 101
Chapter 8 Establishing Your Flock 102
Chapter 9 Nursery to Coop 117
Chapter 10 Care of Adult Chickens 138
Part 4 Determining When There Is a Problem 155
Chapter 11 Recognizing Signs of Illness 156
Chapter 12 Behavior and Misbehavior 176
Part 5 Reward Time! 183
Chapter 13 Enjoying Your Home-Produced Eggs 184
Chapter 14 Recipes for Egg Lovers 189
Chapter 15 Treats for Your Chickens 227
Index 235
Acknowledgments 232
About the Authors and About My Pet Chicken 234
Index 235