There's no escape from chickens. They're everywhere (although Bahrain has the highest human to chicken ratio at 40 to 1). You'll find plenty of other often-hilarious facts together with practical, historical and cultural information in The Bluffer's Guide to Chicken Keeping, which lifts the cooking pot lid on the lives, lusts and quirks on the world's most successful species of bird.

"What is the Perfect Pong?" by Hoover the Dog, is the story about one dog's pursuit of the world's best smell, and features. Hoover, an eight year old terrier crossbreed. It's aimed at pre-readers to five-year-olds. 'We spent a day in London literally following Hoover's nose, photographing as we went. If something interested him, we used it in the book, so although he didn't write the words, it's very much his story', said Hoover's co-author and owner, Martin Gurdon. The pictures were taken by photographer Eleanor Bentall, whose work appears regularly in the "Daily" and "Sunday Telegraph". Martin, a motoring journalist who contributes to titles including the "Evening Standard", "Daily Telegraph" and "She" magazine, also wrote New Holland's "Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance", an unlikely best seller about sex, death and domestic fowl. He confessed that if something pictorially strong didn't grab Hoover's olfactory attention, the dog's interest was helped with the contents of a Tesco ham sandwich. "Dogs Today" magazine was involved with "Pong"s' launch, running a reader promotion, and Dogs Trust has allowed its logo to be used on the book. It will receive 25p from every copy sold. 'When Hoover was a puppy my wife and I found him abandoned and close to death by the roadside', said Martin. 'Dogs Trust is exactly the sort of charity that would have taken care of him if we hadn't been able to. With its 300gsm, lacquered Gloss Art cover and 170gsm Gloss Art pages (24 pages in all), the book has a quality feel, and its 198x198mm size makes it easy to store and display. In a crowded market, "Pong"s' mix of artwork and photography is distinctive-but-familiar, the dog-as-author and charitable donation are also strong selling points - helped by the 'Dogs Trust' logos displayed on the cover and back page. The donation itself is built into the wholesale price and is supplied on a monthly basis by the publishers directly to 'Dogs Trust', so stocking "What is the Perfect Pong?" won't involve you with any additional work. When Martin was promoting "Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance", he ran bookshop events from Kings Lynn to Edinburgh, accompanied by members of his flock, and he's happy to discuss shop visits, readings, etc, for "Pong", and is working on child-friendly activities to make these fun and interesting. If you'd like to see Hoover in the fur, visit his website video blog. You can also view pages of the book on this site.

Thousands of people are keeping chickens as pets for the first time. There are plenty of books that will show you how. Doing Bird tells you what it's like, charting the highs and lows in the year of an amateur hen keeper and his flock. Split into months and seasons, Doing Bird is an extension of Gurdon's highly successful Sunday Telegraph 'Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance' column, and brings out the characters and idiosyncrasies of the birds themselves. Highlights include Bombay the Indian runner duck's unrequited and very non-platonic love for Bella the chicken. Sven the rheumatic, pensioner cockerel's last stand against a marauding fox, and his son Svenson's sometimes awkward transition from teenaged pretender to putative Alpha male with a dodgy aim. We see the power play between flock old stagers Peeping Chicken, Anne Summers, Brahms, Meringue, Bella and Nude to new arrivals Squawks 1 and 2 and the pair of birds initially known as 'the other two,' until one of them tries savaging the author's hand and is re-christened Slasher -leaving her colleague with the sobriquet of 'Too'.

Owning chickens is fast becoming the latest in metropolitan chic. If you can't own them, you'll still want to read about them-witness the recent success of books such as "Extraordinary Chickens" and "Living With Chickens." Another book is soon to hit the poultry bestseller list: This hilarious account of a rookie poultry-owner's experience raising birds in his backyard. Move over Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt (both rumored to raise chickens), Martin Gurdon has written the first "chicken memoir" of its kind. Bound to be a classic, Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance follows the Gurdon family through the ups and downs of this wonderful hobby. In addition to providing eggs, the hens offer distractions from everyday life-BB has terrific telephone etiquette, the spirited but weak Yvette requires Gurdon to act as a personal trainer, and Wimpy is soon renamed Psycho when she's allowed to brood three of her eggs. The book chronicles the daily life of a chicken, including dust baths, brutal pecking-order rituals, gender-bending encounters, and, for its owner, the possibility of huge vet bills. The relationship between bird and human is by turns heartwarming and bewildering, but always entertaining. In fact, readers might even learn a thing or two about raising chickens in this lively book.