Best audience for Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens:
Home and large-scale chicken farmers, city chicken keepers.
Candace said: As an urban flock-tender, Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens is perhaps a little more than I really need. Gail offers a veritable tome of guidance and information on raising chickens both for eggs and as meat-birds. If you want technical information on building a coop, raising chickens from egg to culling, butchering and preserving, general health and even showing and breeding, this guide is sure to deliver. It’s thick with the details of how to raise a flock of near any size with the emphasis being mostly on those of a dozen or more birds. Gail offers enough of the whys that someone with a smaller flock, like the 3-4 hens many city dwellers are allowed by most laws, can adapt her advice to meet the needs of their flock as well. I appreciated the detailed charts and explanations she offers for various practical concerns, like coop management and how to adjust feed for various ages and end desires. For city-chicken-keepers like myself, Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens may not be the best beginner’s guide or choice if you have room for only one chicken book on your shelf. But, if you’re serious about tending a flock or have space for more than just one chicken book, you’d be wise to take a good look at this book.
Sue said: I bought Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens from a feed store a few months before buying my first backyard birds. I knew that I would have just a few birds. I knew that most of the stuff that this book so thoroughly explained was not going to apply to my situation. I read it anyway.
In the age of the internet, this book has increased in value as each chapter is painstakingly researched. Many posts on the internet are not. Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens is reliable. As long as I have chickens, I will keep this book on my shelf. It is dry and technical but accurate. It has been many years since that first trip to the feed store with my chicken wish list. I still pick up “the Guide” and thumb through it for tips on crazy situations that my chickens have put me in.
The bottom line: We give Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow two thumbs up.
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