Hatching & Brooding Your Own Chicks: Chickens, Turkeys, Ducks, Geese, Guinea Fowl

by Gail Damerow

Gail Damerow shows you how to incubate, hatch, and brood baby chickens, ducklings, goslings, turkey poults, and guinea keets. With advice on everything from selecting a breed and choosing the best incubator to feeding and caring for newborn chicks in a brooder, this comprehensive guide also covers issues like embryo development, panting chicks, and a variety of common birth defects. Whether you want to hatch three eggs or one hundred, you’ll find all the information you need to make your poultry-raising operation a success.

Genres: Nonfiction, Animals, Reference, Agriculture

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 2013

About the author

Gail Damerow and her husband operate a family farm in Tennessee where they keep poultry and dairy goats, tend a sizable garden, and maintain a small orchard. They grow and preserve much of their own food, make their own yogurt and ice cream, and bake their own bread. Gail has written extensively on raising livestock, growing fruits and vegetables, and related rural skills. She shares her experience and knowledge as a regular contributor to Backyard Poultry and Countryside magazines, as an occasional contributor to numerous other periodicals, and as the author or contributor to more than a dozen country skills how-to books.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've raised a lot of farm animals. I've even hatched my own chicks and raised them. I've been doing a lot of reading up on the topic because I plan to do so again at the new place we are just moving into...

...but this is THE BEST book I have EVER read on the topic of hatching and brooding your own fowl. It covers all sorts, chickens and waterfowl, game birds... it is the most realistic and honest, straightforward... if you only read ONE book on the topic, this would be IT.

This would be THE go-to book for your library. If you need exacting hatching information, or just want to know what to do with those baby chicks to make sure more of them live when you bring them home from the feed store... this is the place to go.

Good old do-it-yourself and make-your-own suggestions alongside the information for items sold in the markets. From pet chicks to commercial farming chicks, they cover it all.

A must-read for those raising their farm birds from eggs or chicks!

[Elie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even my kids flip through and read sections of this book. The pictures and information are thorough.

[Kate Matson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the best book out there about raising baby poultry. I learned all I know about chicks from this amazing book. Easy read and trains you in the skill of raising baby poultry.

[Jenny Sarı · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book.. I have this book out every time we hatch.. I have let people borrow it and recommend it to many people. I love it

[Nicole McMahon · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a beginner chicken owner, I feel like this book gave great information. The pictures really helped. I learned so much from this book that I did not learn online.

[AJ]

I skimmed through this cherry-picking what parts applied for me, so I'll withhold a rating since I'm not judging the content based on raising Chickens, Turkeys, Ducks, or Guineas, but rather just Geese. I think if you followed this to the letter you'd be well informed on raising Chicks for sure. You'll be able to follow the info on Ducks and the lesser mentioned Goslings enough to put you in a good starting place for Goslings.

That said so often the information I come across on raising Goslings and Geese is lumped in with Ducks, but they are different with different needs. I've noticed a tendency with general fowl raising advice to focus on what's popular with a comment or two on Geese as a *side note* in example when talking Ducks.

That's not to say there isn't a good baseline in this book for Goslings, but you will need to narrow your focus fairly quick as they grow. I was just hoping for much more specific info on Goslings and it's not that I can't find it on the Internet or through people I know, but having a detailed handbook on hand is always a plus.

I did appreciate the info on various types of bedding/substrate. I've only learned of a few people using anything other than the standard pine shavings, but based on Damerow's list I have some ideas to try and opted for play sand to start.

*An aside about the sand, apparently it comes with a warning now that fine particles could cause cancer... so it should be kept wet. Well bedding needs to be dry so I'm thinking of using sand (dried) as a substrate and pine shavings as bedding on top. We'll see how that goes.

All said, I think if you have the money to spend and are just trying to figure out what you'd like to get started raising then this book may help. But if you're just interested in only rearing Goslings, then you might look to a book just on Goslings/Geese.

I've passed this along to a friend who is considering raising Chicks.

[Shaylene · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a good general overview of hatching your own eggs. I throughly enjoyed the diagrams and progression showing a chick from embryo to hatch. Unfortunately this book was just a general overview and most indepth questions I had were best answered through websites like backyard chickens or friends who have far more knowledge than myself. I am glad I loaned this from the library before purchasing it for my personal library as it is not a book I will be adding to my resource shelf anytime soon.

[cellomerl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely tons of info in this book and it has really good illustrations to boot. If you’ve got an incubator and want to understand the ins & outs of using it properly to maximize your hatch rate of healthy chicks, you will get a lot out of this book. It’s not a guide to chicken care but everything you need to know about taking an egg to hatchling either naturally (with a hen) or artificially (with an incubator). The book covers chickens, ducks, geese and Guinea fowl.

[N · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative. I am only brooding already-hatched keets, but the information on incubating and hatching was interesting. I was looking for more information on the in-between stage between week 1 in an introductory brooder and when it is ok to release from a larger brooder. There was a quick mention of grow-cages and the field trips outside, but more here would have helped this newbie.

[Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books is very insightful. I learnt a lot of practical poultry and I believe with the information I have gathered, I am ready to raise my own poultry

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this book. the author may or may not know about chickens but she doesn't seem to know much about ducks and really shouldn't be writing about ducks. I don't know if my comments I made will show up publicly but I found a few statements she made that are not good to follow. I am glad I didn't read this book while learning what to do and what not to do bc I would have made mistakes with ducks or been misinformed at the very least. to be fair, the main focus is chickens and ducks are kind of mentioned on the side but she should be sure to get her facts straight still.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was full of information. But a lot of basic terms went undefined, and i had to read this with my ipad at my side, to look up words. As well, only themost expensive, new materials options were given, leaving one with the impression that to raise a few backyard chickens would be thousands of dollars and man hours of work. There are better guides for beginners, but a seasoned farmer might find this useful for its specialized information.

[Arlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly instructive. Covers everything.