Keeping Chickens: The Essential Guide [Paperback]

Jeremy Hobson (Author), Celia Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2007

This is a solid, practical, everything-you-need-to-know guide to keeping chickens for people who are as interested in them as pets as they are in eggs and other poultry produce. It reveals how, as well as being useful, chickens are interesting and colourful characters that can enliven any garden. They become very tame and make good companions. It includes chapters on using feathers and eggs in art and craft projects, as well as delicious egg recipes. It fuses contemporary design, imaginative and appealing images and lively, authoritative text to ensure the widest possible interest.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Once you've decided which chickens you'd like to keep, how do you go about caring for them? Poultry keepers Hobson and Lewis have produced a nice introduction to backyard chicken keeping. In 11 chapters they consider all aspects of chicken care and maintenance. The authors first look at understanding chickens and what to consider before adding them to the family, followed by choosing a breed (with breed descriptions) and obtaining stock. Chicken care is covered in a chapter on housing and cleaning and one on how to feed your new acquisitions. All you ever wanted to know about eggs, breeding information, and health care fill a section each, with egg crafts and egg recipes completing the text. Delightfully illustrated with pastoral photographs of contented chickens and lovely small watercolors, this British import is a good basic start to chicken keeping Bent, Nancy
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Jeremy Hobson has a lifetime of farming experience and lives in Northern France. Celia Lewis is an artist/craftsperson with a special interest in hens and other domestic birds. She lives in Surrey, England.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: David & Charles; 1 edition (April 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0715325671
• ISBN-13: 978-0715325674
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #396,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chickens are cool!, September 20, 2007

By 

Anyechka (Rensselaer, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Keeping Chickens: The Essential Guide (Paperback)

This short but sweet book is loaded with great advice for the potential first-time chicken-owner, on a wide variety of topics, and has a lot of great pictures to go along with it. Unlike some other books about keeping animals that have historically been used only for food purposes, this book acknowledges and has information for every different type of chicken owner. Some people will be keeping them for meat, some for eggs, some for showing, and some as family pets. And indeed, the majority of the book focuses on the care and upkeep of chickens instead of how to kill a chicken and prepare the carcass. As someone who plans to keep chickens for non-meat reasons, I really appreciated that the reader was not talked to with the assumption that one is only keeping chickens for one reason. Topics covered include the many interesting and beautiful breeds of chicken, chicken anatomy, how to hatch eggs with or without a broody hen, whether one should get a rooster, what to feed them, various types of diseases and conditions they're prone to, what type of housing they need, the ins and outs of eggs, and breeding. There are also a lot of neat trivia tidbits, such as the classification of egg sizes, how the earlobe color usually determines the color of the eggs, and the role chickens and roosters have played in various religions. Concluding the book are chapters about interesting arts and crafts one can make with eggshells and feathers (such as earrings, greeting cards, Chinese lacquer, and cress heads) and some interesting recipes one can make with one's eggs (such as hazelnut meringue roulade and baked eggs in mushroom flans). Overall, it really paints a picture of chickens as a fun, interesting, neat, rewarding, worthwhile pet with so many different functions, whether one intends to keep them to show at 4-H shows, to have a year-round supply of eggs, as pets, or as meat.

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars very enjoyable-- but if only buying one book, not this one, February 2, 2008

By 

N. Ferguson "Two, Daisy, Hannah, and Kitten" (Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Keeping Chickens: The Essential Guide (Paperback)

I really enjoyed this 2007 British book. It is designed for the family considering keeping a few hens in the garden, and is full of information and things to think about. There are (very) brief descriptions of many breeds. A great strength of this book is it's lovely and varied photography (it even has some nice paintings!). It's very entertaining and a FUN read, even including crafts to do with the kids related to chickens! Overall there's a lot crammed in to 150 pages.

Just don't believe the reviewer who said this could be the one book you buy- definitely not true. This is a fun, clearly written book for "dreaming about chickens"-- you'll still need other resources for more indepth information in different areas if you decide to take the plunge. More comprehensive info can be found in "Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens" by Gail Damerow. I also really liked "Living with Chickens". "Choosing and Keeping Chickens" is a great guide to choosing the right breed for your family.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book for caring chicken owners, January 19, 2008

By 

Jill B. Gill - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Keeping Chickens: The Essential Guide (Paperback)

I have been keeping laying hens for fifteen years, and this is the best book that I have ever read on the subject of keeping chickens. It is written with the small flock owner in mind. A caring, humane attitude toward these wonderful creatures comes through both the written content and illustrations in the book. The book covers the usual topics, such as the various breeds, housing and cleaning, feeding, breeding, and health care. It also has chapters on the prospective chicken owner's rationale for having chickens, crafts with eggs and feathers, and yummy egg (not chicken meat!) recipes. The color photos and illustrations are spectacular, and the writing is clear and full of useful information.
Whether you are new to chicken keeping or are an experienced flock tender, I highly recommend this book.