More than ever, Americans care about the quality and safety of the food they eat. They're bringing back an American tradition: raising backyard chickens for eggs, meat, fun, or profit. Chickens in Your Backyard has been the go to guide of chicken care for over 40 years. This revised and updated edition covers all the basics to turn your backyard into a happy homestead-from incubating, raising, housing, and feeding, through treating disease and raising chickens for show. Given some freedom and attention, these birds can become much more than the egg-and-meat machines of commercial hatcheries and broiler factories. Chickens provide backyard farmers with enjoyable pastime, as well as a supply of good food. About Rodale Classics: The new Rodale Classics line is a revised and updated set of our most iconic and bestselling gardening titles. Rodale has been the category leader in organic methods for decades, and gardeners are consistently turning to our tried and true guides for reference. The company will continue to identify appropriate candidates for inclusion into the series in future seasons. The uniform branding and design on these covers will unite these books into a set, capitalizing on the strength and authority of the Rodale brand.

This inspiring introductory guide provides all the information beginners need to raise ducks successfully in the yard or on a small homestead or farm. Ducks are quickly gaining on chickens as popular animals for the backyard homestead or small farm. They are friendly, productive, good at eating pests, remarkably healthy, and easier to raise than chickens in many ways. Plus, they are exceptionally adorable! This accessible introductory guide features original photography tracking the growth and care of a small flock of backyard ducks, and addresses everything the beginner duck keeper needs to know to be successful, including breed selection, housing, feeding, health care, understanding behavior, and egg and meat production.

Gail Damerow is the foremost authority on chickens in the United States, and her classic reference The Chicken Health Handbook (originally published in 1994) is now completely revised with up-to-the minute information and full-colour photography and illustrations. This essential guide thoroughly addresses every aspect of chicken health, including good nutrition; bacterial, viral, and fungal diseases; parasites and worms; reproductive issues; immune health; metabolic dysfunctions; and much more, with detailed solutions for any health problem your chickens encounter. This new second edition emphasizes natural and preventive approaches and covers issues specific to raising chickens in the city.

If you want to incubate, hatch, and brood chicks yourself, rather than buying them from a hatchery, this is the guide you need. Poultry authority Gail Damerow explains exactly how to hatch healthy baby chickens, ducklings, goslings, turkey poults, and guinea keets, addressing everything from selecting a breed and choosing the best incubator to ensuring proper set-up and sanitary conditions, understanding embryo development, and feeding and caring for newborn chicks in a brooder. This is an indispensable reference for any poultry raiser, whether you want to hatch three eggs or one hundred.

From addled to wind egg, crossed beak to zygote, the terminology of everything chicken is demystified in "The Chicken Encyclopedia", a comprehensive A-to-Z reference volume presented in a friendly, highly illustrated format. Whether it's the difference between wry tail, split tail, and gamy tail; the meaning of hen feathered, forced molt, or quill feather; the characteristics of droopy wing; the content of granite grit; or the translation of a chicken's alarm call, here are all the answers to every chicken question and quandary, from the practical to the curious. The in-depth entries go beyond simple definitions to offer solutions to problems, instructions for tasks from catching a chicken to candling an egg, and historical origins of poultry-related terms. The fascinating lore behind breeds such as the Dutch Bantam and the Egyptian Fayoumi are detailed, as well as the reasons for behaviours from beak beating to head shaking.

Imagine a weekend breakfast featuring eggs, bacon, and honey from your own chickens, pigs, and bees. Or a holiday meal with your own heritage-breed turkey as the main attraction. With "The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals, " even urban and suburban residents can successfully raise chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits, goats, sheep, cows, pigs, and honey bees. It s easier than you think, and it can be done on small plots of land. This essential guide covers everything from selecting the right breeds to producing delicious fresh milk, cheese, honey, eggs, and meat. Whether you want to be more self-sufficient, save money, or just enjoy safer, healthier, more delicious animal products, you ll find all the information you need in "The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals.""