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The second section is about “Getting Started”, with preliminary considerations, advice on choosing your first hens and a great section on choosing popular breeds and hybrids. The section on how to buy hatching eggs is particularly helpful.

Section 3 brings us to the meat of the book, with lots of detail and helpful advice on care of your flock of hens. There is information on daily and seasonal tasks and a monthly diary too! If your budget is tight in true Haynes fashion there is an excellent step by step photo guide to building your own coop – the book is well worth buying for that alone. That section has helpful advice with dealing with predators – I didn’t know rats don’t like mint – so I’ll be planting that next to our run this Spring. I found the first aid essentials section extremely useful and I promptly ordered a large bottle of surgical spirit from Ebay to treat an ongoing scaly leg mite problem on my Jersey Blue Giant’s leg.

Section 4 begins to move on from the beginning stages of keeping chickens to topics like breeding and showing.

The masterpiece section 5 is on health problems which is great! There are superb sections on identifying, treating and preventing common chicken health issues, with colour step by step photos in certains sections and not too gruesome photos to help spot problems!

The “Further information” section 6 is about preparing and eating the fruits of chicken keeping. Advice on the perfect boiled eggs including avoiding cracking and the black ring is very good. The one disppointment of the whole book is how to dispatch and pluck a chicken. Sensibly there are no photos, but the line drawings look like those in a 1980′s Ford Escort Haynes Manual and let down the wonderful design of the rest of the book. That said, it is one of the clearest explanations of how to do the deed and the diagrams are clear. The step by step photo guide on dressing a bird more than makes up for the naff looking drawings of the previous section.

The manual finishes off with a comprehensive contact details section, glossary and further reading..

All in all this a superb book, aimed at the mass market beginner, but a very helpful reference to intermediate and advanced keepers. It’s my current favourite of the recent colour illustrated books by a long way!


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One mum’s experience of keeping chickens. A great read packed full of interesting background information and tips. Full review here.

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Gone are the days of Haynes manuals just being useful oil-stained guides to keeping old cars on the road. The Haynes Chicken manual is a superb comprehensive guide to keeping chickens- in easy to read in lay terms!
Read More…

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The best selling beginners guide to keeping chickens from this site!

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Foxes

Our page on foxes and how to deter them.

By Lisa Lawley on www.flikr.com

Rats

Our page on rats and how to deal with them.

"Rat in the Chicken Run" by random.pinkness on www.flikr.com

Worms

Our page on poultry worms and how to deal with them

Roundworm by onlyruff 1 on www.flickr.com

Red Mite

Our page on red mites and how to deal with them plus a youtube video from www.chickencoopsdirect.com

Fox and Chick with permission from Vince Millett on www.flikr.com

Every now and again a good news story of hen fightback happens as can be seen in this ITN video clip

The fox

There are around 250,000 foxes in the UK. The urban fox has a typical lifespan of 7 years, the rural upto 4 years. A fox has a territory of 0.1km2 in the town and upto 40km2 in the countryside. They are omnivores – meaning they will eat anything from worms, small insects to fruit, but they prefer meat. They have small stomachs and will hide and bury meat – which is probably the real reason why Monsieur Reynard will kill your brood given the chance.

A vixen typically mates in January to Februaury and will have a brood of 5 cubs 53 days later. The cubs will be dpeendent on mum till late July and will begin to disperse in Oct. Females weigh up to 6kg and males upto 8kg. Apparently the population self regulates – the main cause of premature death being roadkill and sarcoptic mange will killed 95% of the population in the 90′s. Population is increasing slowly again.

Getting rid of the fox threat.

Sadly killing your local fox won’t help. There is no such thing as vacant territory. Another one will take it over.
The best thing is deterrence, so here are our top tips

Protecting against fox attack

• A weld-mesh run (not chicken wire, which is not fox proof)
• A solid floor so that foxes cannot dig underneath
• A secure lock that cannot be worked loose (i.e. not a latch)
• Leave your scent – human hair tied to the fence and urinate!

Buy Electric Fencing Kit*

Another help can stopping them climb over fencing using something like this…

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Further Reading

www.thefoxwebsite.org

Register your poultry supply store

Here are the 1 suppliers registered in New+Zealand Click on a marker to see their details...

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It is a meticulously researched book, full of fascinating facts and details as she learned the art of keeping hens. I almost grabbed a highlighter pen to mark useful passages! That’s the genius of the book – it’s not a Bridget Jones Henkeeping Diary, it’s a beginner’s guide. Julia covers the basics very well with chapters on feed, eggs, foxes, sickness, battery hens, killing and hatching.

The chapter on Chicken feed was fascinating – Julia rejected pelleted feed with its yolk enhancing (i.e. colouring) additives and soya and went for an old-fashioned kitchen slops and grass approach. Her case was argued well, with a smattering of great anecdotes and facts. Did you know that while the average child has 10,000 tastebuds, hens have a few dozen?

The eggs chapter was similarly captivating. After detailing commercial egg prodution, Julia describes how eggs are formed and laid in great page-turning detail!

Mr Fox sadly makes frequent appearances and details of defences are given against this devastating fiend!

The chapter that has shocked many readers is when Julia decided to cull a chook – she described in jaw-dropping detail her research into how and then how she finally did it – skip the chapter if you are squeamish.

At the end of the book her list of thanks contains an impressive array of sources and in the book she cites helpful websites without naming them. Could it be she, like you, visited www.keepchickens.info?!

I loved this book, a great story and very helpful advice. Well worth buying!

The simple answer in the UK is yes – we don’t need permission from the council to keep a few hens.

But if you are a homeowner – you may need to check your deeds to see if there is a covenant or restriction against poultry – pretty unlikely!
If you rent privately, you will need to ask your landlord- who will probably say no!
If you are a council or housing association tenant you will also need to ask them and they will probably say no too.

You should also talk to your neighbours and reassure them there will be no smell because you will keep them clean, no escapes because of the run you will use and very little noise because there will be no cockerels! Keep them sweet with regular eggs!

If you have no neighbours nearby, lucky you and go for it!

In the United States all sorts of zoning regulations apply and you will need to check further.

Register your poultry supply store

Register your poultry supply store

Register your poultry supply store

Here are the 1 suppliers registered in Armagh Click on a marker to see their details...