I enjoyed this book, and found it ...has some good ideas, but I am on a binge --reading everything I can lay my hands on about chickens. For a really comprehensive review of what people are building all over the country, from small to large, modest (made from recycled doors, etc.)to fancy, along with pictures and real-life stories about what worked well, and what didn't, go to www.backyardchickens.com -- they have a huge coop section divided into tractors (open-bottomed movable coops), small, medium and large palaces, as well as much advice from poultry fanciers. Really well-run forum, too, where you can learn a lot from real folks, and many, many links.
The book has innovative ideas about buildi...ng coops and how to care for chickens. It covers everything from coop design to bedding, nests, roosts, feeders, waterers and using cages or giving yard access. There is a section on fencing. I never knew you could put an electric fence around a coop. It shows you how to make a waterer from an empty number 10 can. It covers how to care for chickens in the cold and the heat. A very uesful little book. I am very satisfied with my purcahse.
This is an exellent gui...de for raising & maintaining healthy chickens. It's a bit on the minimalist side, but an exellent read & resource. It starts with why chickens need what they need and builds on that to explain how to keep healthy chickens. What the chickens needs are, what the best foods are, and daily water requirements. The guide further describes a healthy coop environment and how to keep it that way. There is some info on raising caged chickens, for show or not, but primarily covers a chicken coop and a chicken yard. The guide also covers free range chicken raining, if you have the space. It covers in great detail how to keep your chicken(s) healthy. Several options for how to pen your chickens is also covered. Each phase of growing chicks & keeping chicks is covered: prepping the site, building a coop, keeping the yard clean and trouble free, watering (fresh at all tmes), food, nesting, nesting materials, egg collecting, everything is covered except for harvesting the meat, which is not the purpose or direction of this guide. Overall this is a quick (32 pages) read and a great resource for any future problems or concerns. Anyone from city dweller to urban 'farmer' to suburban 'chicken rancher' to chicken 'shower' can benefit from having this guide in their "Chicken Library". I hope you enjoy this guide as much as I do.
After looking throughout ebay for a quality book that would ...help my father design and build a chicken coop, I found this book. To be totally honest I was expecting more in terms of the size of the book and the amount of information, but my father was quite happy with the book. It has a great deal of quality information, but it is very short and not too in-depth. This book is great for someone that has a general knowledge of chickens and chicken coops but needs a little help with the fine points and specifics of designing and building a coop. If you are looking to start from scratch with the whole idea of chickens, I would look for a more indepth book. But overall, this is a good book and is exactly what my father was looking for,
We decided to buy it thinking it would give us more info...rmation on how layout, do's and don'ts, blueprint ideas, actually it was just General. It didn't give any real specifics about how coops should be built. We are going to raise chickens this year, we were looking for information about how to.... we live in a cold state in the winter so we were looking for info. on ideas about that. I really thought it would have more information. We found more information on the web sites that sell chickens. I guess if you need to know the do's and don'ts about Chickens you go to the ones that sell them. They want you to be happy customers and repeat buyers.