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City Chicks: Keeping Micro-flocks of Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-reyclers, and Local Food Producers
There are a lot of books about chickens, but City Chicks is the ONLY book that tells you how to employ them using their skill sets. Urban agriculture is on the rise and City Chicks shows how to enable local food supply by keeping family flocks of chickens as garden helpers, compost creators, bio-recyclers, and local food suppliers. How-to detail throughout all 460 pages on keeping, employing, growing food for, and enjoying backyard poultrys. Chickens are the mascot of the local food movement. A desire for sustainable, clean, wholesome food and superior soil quality has led more and more suburban and city dwellers to keep laying hens in their backyards and gardens. Across America municipalities are allowing, and even encouraging, residents to keep laying hens within city limits. Learn how you Develop your own Chicken Have-More Plan. Have fresh, heart-healthy eggs, daily from your backyard home flock. Employ your chicken s skill sets as garden workers, organic pesticiders, herbiciders, fertilizers, compost creators and top soil enhancers. Become a chicken whisperer. Save millions of tax payer dollars by using chickens to divert food and yard waste from landfills and waste management systems. Be a Primary Poultry Health Care Practitioner to save on vet bills. The Poultry s Pharmacy shows you how to make and use effective, inexpensive home treatments. Draft and pass local laws allowing laying hens within your town or city. Avoid roosters and why you don t want them. Do much, much more with chickens than you ever thought possible, including outrageous chicken tricks. Learn how Have built urban chicken tractors, hen huts, condos and chicken chateaus to blend in with neighborhood landscape and architecture. Join in urban eco-agri-tourism with annual coop & garden home tours for fund raising. Start or join local poultry clubs. Keep small flocks to help preserve endangered breeds of chickens. Draft and pass local laws allowing laying hens within their town s limits. By the co-author of Chicken Tractor, Backyard Market Gardening, Day Range Poultry and the Co-Host of the Chicken Whisperer Backyard Poultry and Sustainable Lifestyles Talk Show. City Chicks is a revolutionary way of keeping and using chickens by thinking outside the coop and inside the gardens . Over 100 photos, drawings, and tables give visual clarity. The imaginative and entertaining style of writing is combined with handson, real-life experience to bring you one of the most complete and authorative books on micro-flock management. The chicken is still having her moment as the mascot and darling of the always-cresting locavore food movement. Many people are struggling to learn how, exactly, to care for her. Enter City Chicks; Penelope Green, New York Times, September 2009.
464 pages, Perfect Paperback
First published October 18, 2009
24 people are currently reading
241 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
January 3, 2010
The aim of City Chicks is to encourage a new generation of urban hen keepers. Rather than just thinking of hens as a source of eggs (or chicken dinners!), Patricia Foreman wants us to invite a micro-flock of chicken workers into our gardens and yards. She believes that their skill set solves a lot of our gardening and environmental problems.
Backyard hens will produce high quality eggs (know where your food comes from!) and help to keep your garden free from weeds and pests while adding organic matter to your topsoil and mixing it in. They provide hours of cheap (h)entertainment and companionship and their manure makes a powerful fertilizer and compost activator. They'll also clean up your compost (removing anything tasty, including weed seeds) and spread it around the garden for you, although you do need to manage your avian workers correctly to avoid them trashing your seedlings and eating your veg plants. And in urban settings, a small flock of hens can help to solve a difficult environmental problem by turning waste food into eggs and compost.
But City Chicks isn't just an inspiring manifesto. Once it has you hooked on the idea of keeping a few hens then the book explains (very well, and in detail) how to look after them. There are chapters on feeding and housing chickens, picking them up and providing medical care, how to choose your breeds, introduce the hens to your children and even raise your own chicks. Several chapters cover gardening with hens - growing food for them, integrating them into your composting system and keeping them under control.
And if that wasn't enough, there's a glossary and a Chicken Trivia section as the back, and a chapter on understanding your birds.
Although I live in the UK and a lot of the legal information isn't applicable here (and feeding food waste to chickens is currently illegal), I found this book inspiring and very useful and it will take pride of place on my self as the best chicken book I have read so far.
Backyard hens will produce high quality eggs (know where your food comes from!) and help to keep your garden free from weeds and pests while adding organic matter to your topsoil and mixing it in. They provide hours of cheap (h)entertainment and companionship and their manure makes a powerful fertilizer and compost activator. They'll also clean up your compost (removing anything tasty, including weed seeds) and spread it around the garden for you, although you do need to manage your avian workers correctly to avoid them trashing your seedlings and eating your veg plants. And in urban settings, a small flock of hens can help to solve a difficult environmental problem by turning waste food into eggs and compost.
But City Chicks isn't just an inspiring manifesto. Once it has you hooked on the idea of keeping a few hens then the book explains (very well, and in detail) how to look after them. There are chapters on feeding and housing chickens, picking them up and providing medical care, how to choose your breeds, introduce the hens to your children and even raise your own chicks. Several chapters cover gardening with hens - growing food for them, integrating them into your composting system and keeping them under control.
And if that wasn't enough, there's a glossary and a Chicken Trivia section as the back, and a chapter on understanding your birds.
Although I live in the UK and a lot of the legal information isn't applicable here (and feeding food waste to chickens is currently illegal), I found this book inspiring and very useful and it will take pride of place on my self as the best chicken book I have read so far.
January 2, 2012
Loaded with information, but at 450+ pages, could have stood some serious editing. Facts get repeated a bunch of times. There are some grammatical errors (like "hay bails" -- oof). And the book seems to get sidetracked, like a chapter with case studies on large-scale chicken composting facilities, while interesting, aren't really of much use, other than to go, "huh, that's cool." That aside, the rest of the book is filled with good information on everything from why you should keep chickens, to medical info and behavioral issues.
May 19, 2014
The star rating given reflects my opinion within ‘the official goodreads rating system’.
1 star: Didn’t Like it
2 stars: It’s Okay
3 stars: Liked it
4 stars: Really Liked it
5 stars: It Was Amazing
I don’t really give a rat-fuck that there are some who think I ‘owe’ an explanation for my opinion. Nope, nada, and not sorry about it.
Sometimes I may add notes to explain what my opinions are based on, and sometimes I don’t. I do this for me, on my books, in my library and I don’t ‘owe’ any special snowflakes a thing. Fuck off if you don’t like it and stop reading my shit.
Particularly given the ‘modifications’ to reader’s personal content going on (and outright censorship), unless particularly motivated I will not comment in detail.
It would help if GR was forthcoming in the new ‘appropriate’ and would make a site-wide announcement delineating the new focus from a reader-centric site to one that is now for authors and selling.
1 star: Didn’t Like it
2 stars: It’s Okay
3 stars: Liked it
4 stars: Really Liked it
5 stars: It Was Amazing
I don’t really give a rat-fuck that there are some who think I ‘owe’ an explanation for my opinion. Nope, nada, and not sorry about it.
Sometimes I may add notes to explain what my opinions are based on, and sometimes I don’t. I do this for me, on my books, in my library and I don’t ‘owe’ any special snowflakes a thing. Fuck off if you don’t like it and stop reading my shit.
Particularly given the ‘modifications’ to reader’s personal content going on (and outright censorship), unless particularly motivated I will not comment in detail.
It would help if GR was forthcoming in the new ‘appropriate’ and would make a site-wide announcement delineating the new focus from a reader-centric site to one that is now for authors and selling.
April 4, 2010
This was all the chicken book I needed. She covers every question I had, and several that I didn't think to ask. We literally got piles of books on chicken care from the library, and you know this one is enough for me. I love the section on medical care. She's a real do-it-yourselfer, who has never brought a chicken to the vet. This would be a great reference book as there are a lot of recipes, for feed, medicine, etc.
August 12, 2010
Of all of the chicken books I have read these last few weeks, this is one of the best. Clear, practical advice, well organized and easy to follow.
March 27, 2012
A lot of good information here.
September 9, 2012
Very informative when she's dealing with facts, but very liberally-biased when it comes to her own opinions.
October 28, 2020
This is the first, and so far only, book I've ever read on chickens but I really enjoyed it. I also don't have chickens. I think it's meant more as a reference but I read it cover to cover. There is a lot of information that gets repeated but to be fair, it's the important information. Some parts were a bit confusing, particularly when describing the interesting and ingenious ways other people have deployed their chickens. I felt that this has given me a solid basis for getting chickens of my own and incorporating them into my gardening routine. Overall, the good parts were what stuck with me and the more confusing or poorly written parts have not.
December 12, 2024
Pretty comprehensive book about everything chickens.! Definitely would be a good resource for anyone starting out in chickens. Easy to read but thorough.
October 30, 2020
I bought this book, along with several others, for my 8 year old son to guide him in his laying hen business. This was the best book of the batch, a comprehensive guide to keeping a small flock of laying hens in your backyard/garden. Lots of good tips and experience in these pages. If you are more interested in a medium size flock (25-200 chickens) then you should probably buy their other book "Chicken Tractor", and if you are more interested in a large flock (hundreds or thousands of chickens), then you should get their book "Day Range Poultry"
March 20, 2010
Fantastic, thorough guide about keeping manageable-sized flocks in the urban environment. Its hard to find a detailed, well-researched, educated guide about the particulars of raising small flocks, no less in city limits, and this book hits the nail right on the head. Not only did I read it straight through before acquiring a flock, but now that we have chicks, I've consulted it multiple times. Definitely recommend.
November 12, 2010
Full disclosure: I work with Pat on Andy Schneider's Chicken Whisperer radio program, where I talk about traditional breeds on the fourth Tuesday of every month. She's capable, efficient, direct and funny. She's written an excellent book on raising chickens in urban and suburban areas. She's included so much of her experience and research that it's got something for everyone who has or wants to have chickens. It deserves a place on every poultry-lover's bookshelf, right next to mine!
September 4, 2012
This is THE book to read if you are planning to have a micro-flock. I have read several other chicken books and exhausted the information available online from hatcheries, hippies and county extension offices and found this book to be the very best one. She explains the whys and provides concrete examples. She is thorough and explores many topics not broached in other books on the market. Well, gotta go - time to visit my zen-hens for their afternoon treat! <3
June 17, 2010
An excellent guide to raising chickens. Lots of good, basic info, including thoughts on how to easily use chicken manure in your garden. Also offers a comprehensive list of types of chickens, how well they lay, their personalities, etc.
July 8, 2010
Great resource for anyone who wants to start keeping a small flock of chickens for egg laying. Covers housing, brooding baby chicks, feeding from chicks to adult chickens, using chickens as garden helpers and more. You'll return to it for info over and over.
July 29, 2010
Fairly comprehensive reference for prospective or current urban/suburban keepers of chickens. Kind of like talking to your neighbor informally rather than reading information well supported by data, but valuable due to the dearth of books on the subject.
September 3, 2011
Great book. I got so excited that we built a very nice hen house and bought 8 chickens which we let out each evening to roam around in the yard. It's been fun. Patricia Foreman tells you just about everything you need to know to get started.
March 28, 2013
Extremely thorough but engaging and easy to understand book on keeping city chickens. Great resource full of information. Everything from raising egg layers, health care, home remedies, housing, common 'troubleshooting' and more.
August 28, 2015
Did not finish.
Started it, and it seemed excessively long-winded and poorly put-together. Then I kept running into typos. And then I found the word "irregardless" used in earnest, and I put the book down for good.
Too bad, because the cover is great.
Started it, and it seemed excessively long-winded and poorly put-together. Then I kept running into typos. And then I found the word "irregardless" used in earnest, and I put the book down for good.
Too bad, because the cover is great.
September 24, 2016
Amazing ideas for self sustainability
Raised beds for vegetables and chickens to enjoy and you too makes sense to me. If you need to know all about how to help yourself with eating healthy and self employment you might have a better idea here.
Raised beds for vegetables and chickens to enjoy and you too makes sense to me. If you need to know all about how to help yourself with eating healthy and self employment you might have a better idea here.
February 13, 2010
Finding out all I can about having city chickens in my backyard.
I had to order this one from Amazon. I think my future chickens will thank me.
I had to order this one from Amazon. I think my future chickens will thank me.
September 10, 2010
Great information. Now I just have to find the time.
May 3, 2011
Loved this book. A must read for chicken owners. Humorous writing style, full of facts and topics I haven't yet seen in any other chicken books I have read. Thumbs up!
April 30, 2014
Should I ever seriously pursue the chicken idea, this might well be my go-to book.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews