Raising Backyard Chickens

By Dwayne Haskell

This book covers topics such as:

Why raise chickens?
Before you begin...
Regulations
Diseases and other maladies
Buying laying hens, chicks or hatching the eggs yourself
Pecking order
What type of chickens?
White eggs, brown eggs, or colored eggs?
Brown eggs
White eggs
Colored eggs (Blue/Green)
Full sized birds or bantams?
Egg production
Broodiness
Hardiness
Confinement
Egg layers
Meat birds
Setting up your brooder
Heat lamp
Box/brooder
Litter
Feeding and watering
Chicks
Pasting up
and much more!

Links to other resources such as PDFs from Universities, charts and pictures, coop designs, and more, are presented throughout the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dwayne Haskell
• Release date: Jan 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311428844

Dwayne Haskell

Enjoys writing helpful books that will save the purchaser time and money. Subjects include fixing and replacing toilets, replacing shingles, dividing ornamental grass, how to raise backyard chickens, and more. Also enjoys building and administering websites.

Book preview

Introduction

Why raise chickens?

There are many reasons you may want to raise chickens. Here are my favorites:

Fresh eggs-Raising your own chickens give you 100% control over how they are treated and what they eat. If you want to feed your birds an all organic feed so you know there are no medications or chemicals in their feed, you can! Check out the following picture. Notice the difference between the egg I collected from my hens and the two I purchased from the store?

Insect control-My initial reason for raising chickens was to control the Japanese beetles on my property. My chickens absolutely LOVE to eat them and often times almost fight each other for them..

Pets-Yes, you can keep chickens as pets! I have mine trained to come when I whistle and they know there are always treats waiting when they come. Here is one helping me build the coop:

Fertilizer-Chicken poop makes great fertilizer because it is high in Nitrogen. It must not be used immediately after cleaning out the coop however. It must age a short while to reduce the burning your plants may suffer because of the same high Nitrogen levels. (Be sure to share the wealth and list your extra poop on TAKEMYPOOP.COM!)

Exhibition-Chickens come in all shapes, sizes and colors, so showing them off is a popular pastime.

Meat-Chickens can be raised for meat as well as eggs. Special breeds (called dual purpose) can be purchased to provide eggs and the bird can also be butchered for meat. Specific breeds are also available for just providing meat.

Before you begin…

You need to do a little homework before digging in and by reading this; you are on the right track! A few things to consider before buying chicks or full grown birds are:

Regulations

Egg production or meat birds?

Housing and space requirements

Noise

Cost

Health

Choosing the correct breed for your climate

I will go over each of these topics so you can make a good informed decision and don’t get into trouble.

True story (also known as don’t make the same mistake I did): I initially started raising chickens to control the Japanese beetle population on my property. The chickens were free ranged so they had plenty of room and tasty insects to eat. Then they started to lay eggs…I hadn’t put a whole lot of thought into the eggs and was soon overwhelmed with them!

I had unknowingly chosen very prolific egg producers and was getting six eggs EVERY DAY! Unfortunately, neither my son nor I eat that many eggs! I hadn’t thought ahead and gathered enough egg cartons to hold them nor had I figured out where all those eggs