- ISBN13: 9781580174916
- Condition: New
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Product Description
Chickens are hot! There’s a chicken-farming boomlet on the rise, with upscale urban and suburban homeowners from every part of the country ordering fancy breeds of chickens, hiring architects to build elegant chicken coops in their backyards, and signing up for classes on how to raise a happy, healthy flock in a small space.
Now Barbara Kilarski, a woman with a passion for poultry, offers a handbook that is as practical and encouraging as it is witty and entertaining. THE TOWN & COUNTRY CHICKEN provides the detailed information every aspiring chickenkeeper needs to know.
Like home-grown vegetables, home-raised chickens put us in touch with our rural past, give us a sense of self-sufficiency, and provide food – eggs! – for the table that is a lot tastier than anything we could find at the supermarket. And chickens are fun! Like dogs, they bond with their owners, and like kids, they do the darnedest things.
Kilarski regales the reader with tales spotlighting the joys of raising chickens, while at the same time explaining the nitty-gritty details of how to be a successful chicken keeper. Any way you look at it, chickens are a star of the domestic household. They are easy and inexpensive to raise, they don’t need much living space, and they provide eggs for free. No dog or cat on the planet can make the same claim.
Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces
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5 Responses
This is a nice introduction for those thinking about keeping a few pet chickens. An easy, quick, and fun read. The author’s enthusiasm is infectious. She helps you to feel that you, too, can keep chickens! :)
I was disappointed by one part of the book, though. The author strongly advocates using rat poison to deal with the rodents that inevitably want to dip into chicken feed and invade chicken coops. She states that using a box for the poison which has a small entry hole will prevent cats and dogs from being poisoned. Don’t count on it! Rat poison is an anticoagulant which slowly kills rats and mice by causing massive internal bleeding. When cats or dogs catch and eat these sick, miserable rodents (or scavenge dead rodents) they are inevitably killed, too– there is no effective treatment. I personally know of two dogs and two cats which died horrible deaths after ingesting poisoned rodents. So… unless you want to risk killing your own pets and your neighbor’s pets, avoid rat poison. There are plenty of other alternatives on the market.
All of the chicken books I have read have the same advice regarding poison, so this isn’t a downside for this particular book. (The Storey Guide by Gail Damerow has a little more guidance about which poisons are the most dangerous, but still advocates using poison.) Overall, it was a great book!
Rating: 4 / 5
Posted on September 5th, 2010 at 12:02 am
Ok, I have to be honest. I don’t own any chickens…. yet. I plan on building a coop this spring and getting some though. I have been reading lots of books on chickens and I recommend this one for the small flock owner along with Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens.
For one thing Keeping Chickens is more warm fuzzy, pro-chicken as pets kind of book than any of the other books I have read. Some of the other books get a little dry especially in the “processing” chapter. I can only have three hens and they are going to be pampered pets so the “processing” parts don’t interest me.
It has some nice color pictures in the middle and lots of good chicken advice throughout. I was dissapointed by the lack of more detailed coop design although she gives lots of good tips and advice on building one.
I do have one bone to pick with the author though. The book lists some of the major cities and their chickens laws and it got Juneau’s wrong. She listed that there were no rules and cited the animal control ordinances as proof. Actually, there are rules and they are in title 49 of the zoning and planning ordinances. Be warned, check your local laws for yourself. Call Animal Control, the Humane Society or the City and double check!
Rating: 4 / 5
Posted on September 5th, 2010 at 2:57 am
I love the simplicity of this little book. The author makes it sound so doable to keep chickens in the city. However, I was dismayed to read that she so flippantly suggests using poison as way to manage rats, who are inevitably drawn to the chicken feed. Well, the problem with poisoning rats–who die of a “bad stomache” as she describes it — is that these rats not only suffer a horribly cruel demise but also could be eaten by predators such as raptors who will suffer a similar end. I know this very thing happened in San Francisco, where the red tailed hawk population was affected by rat poison placed in Golden Gate Park.
I am just surprised that a book published by an “eco friendly” company would allow such a cavalier recommendation to use a method that is anything but eco-friendly in the larger sense. I love chickens but there is a larger world and context beyond them. Still, it is useful and enjoyable how-to on raising chickens, and if it were minus the presumptious attitude about ridding the coop of rats it would be something I’d recommend.
Rating: 3 / 5
Posted on September 5th, 2010 at 4:39 am
I didn’t find this book very useful. First, it is a slim volume to start with, so it is not really very comprehensive.
Half of it is the author just sort of rambling on about her chickens. She includes lots of stories about her chickens, how she decided to keep chickens, other people’s reactions to her chickens, etc. I found this part somewhat charming but not really helpful in any way. And after a while, it got kind of annoying [like someone telling stories about their children incessantly - kids you've never met - and just going on and on. Our children tend to be cuter and funnier to *us* than they are to strangers - after a while I'd had enough of cutsie stories about how adorable she thinks her personal chickens are].
Then the other half of the book is some really, REALLY basic information on getting chickens and raising them. But the information is so simplistic that if you have already read ANY other book on raising chickens, then you know far more than you are going to get from this book.
Some of the information she included was just kind of strange… like saying that you have to line your brooder cage with either rags, towels, or old socks and then throw them out every day and line the cage with different rags, towels, or socks…. not only have I never seen that advice in ANY other chicken book [and I've built quite a library at this point], but that seems like it could get really expensive pretty quick… how many socks am I willing to waste lining a brooder box with fresh socks every day?
She also says you need to feed your chickens cottage cheese and spinach every day….
She also is kind of on the extreme end when it comes to chickens – if you have even the faintest idea that you might eat one of your chickens one day, DON’T bother with this book. The author considers anyone who would eat their chicken to be a cruel monster. The author talks about chickens as beloved pets and really personifies them to the point that the fact that they are domesticated animals reared to be food for thousands of years is completely lost on her. [Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to eat my 5 little hens either - I just don't have the heart for chicken slaying personally - but I found it bizarre that the author of a book about keeping chickens would be "animal rights-ish" to the point of implying that someone who would kill and eat their chicken is evil.....]
There were other things that made the book an odd read too. The author keeps mentioning her “spouse” – the spouse is never given a name or referred to as anything other than “my spouse”, in a way that is actually very awkward. I suspect that the spouse might be a same sex partner because of the way pronouns were so carefully and awkwardly avoided – it was just odd. It seemed to me that she needed to either honor the spouse with a name and a personality or leave the spouse out of the book entirely. It was weird reading it the way it is written.
So, I have to say all in all, this is an odd little book that I would recommend skipping. [I should have taken this one out at the library first I guess!]. I think the beginning chicken keeper would find “Living With Chickens” to be FAR more useful and entertaining.
Rating: 2 / 5
Posted on September 5th, 2010 at 4:43 am
This book was one of several I purchased before placing my first order for backyard chickens. Although it is an easy light read, it really doesn’t provide any substantial information or help. It is completely based on the author’s experiences which are extremely limited (3 chickens). She does not pull in other experienced opinions which is the downfall of this book.
As an example, she mentions the deep litter method but has had no experience with it. Instead of interviewing another chicken owner that does, she simply states that she feels that there would be too much smell. It is an uninformed and lazy opinion not worthy of a guide for new owners.
If you’re looking for an entertaining little piece of fluff that you can read in an afternoon, this is the book. You will be inundated with detailed accounts of the antics of these three particular chickens. But if you’re looking for real info to get you started, save your money and buy the Storey guide.
Rating: 2 / 5
Posted on September 5th, 2010 at 4:56 am