CITY CHICKS:
Keeping Micro-flocks of Laying Hens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-recyclers and Local Food Suppliers, by Patricia Foreman 460 ppb
The local foods movement is mushrooming and chickens have become its mascot. City Chicks brings fresh, innovative and new information about keeping backyard flocks of urban chickens.
City Chicks describes in detail how chicken’s “skill sets” can be employed in a “Hen-Have-More Plan” for food production systems. Instead of using oil-based chemicals, chickens can help produce fertilizer and compost; they can turn yard waste into garden soil. Hens can also be used as mobile, clucking, (organic and non-toxic), pesticiders, herbiciders, and insecticiders.
And chickens can be of civic service. One chicken eats about 7 pounds of food “waste” a month. A few hundred households keeping micro-flocks of laying hens can divert tons of yard and food biomass “waste” from trash collection saving municipalities millions, even billions of tax payer dollars. To quote City Chicks:
“What if a city had 2,000 households with three hens (or more) each? That could translate to 252 tons of food waste diverted from landfills each year ... Add to that number the tons of yard waste (grass clippings and leaves) that can hens can help convert into compost and the amount is as enormous as the tax-savings of NOT having to handle, transport and store all that biomass waste”. (Page 20 to 21)
This 460 page book has over 100 photos, sketches, and tables bringing visual clarity and simplicity to complex concepts. To see two examples click here:
• Chicken Skill Sets (page 18) and,
• Chickens in Recycling and Food Production Systems (page 19).
City Chicks ushers in a new paradigm of how to use these versatile, clucking, feathered bi-peds in a variety of roles that help decrease carbon foot-prints, save tax payer dollars and support local food supply production.
City Chicks shows how you can:
Have fresh, heart-healthy eggs, daily from your backyard home flock.
Employ your chicken’s “skill sets” as garden workers, organic pesticiders, herbiciders, fertilizers, compost creators and top soil enhancers.
Take the best care of your flock and become a Chicken Whisperer.
City Chicks also explores the civic side of chickens and how they can be employed as clucking city workers helping to divert food and yard waste from landfills. This can save millions of tax payer dollars.
Be a Primary Poultry Health Care Practitioner to save on, and even avoid, vet bills.
The Poultry’s Pharmacy shows you how to make and use effective, inexpensive home treatments.
Draft and pass local laws allowing laying hens within your town or city.
Avoid roosters and why you don’t want them.
Do much, much more with chickens than you ever thought possible, including outrageous chicken tricks.
Learn how others
Have built urban chicken tractors, hen huts, condos and chicken chateaus to blend in with neighborhood landscape and artchitecture.
Join in urban eco-agro-tourism with annuan coop and garden home tours.
Start or join local poultry clubs and blogs.
Keep small flocks to help preserve endangered breeds of chickens.
Draft and pass local laws allowing laying hens within their town's limits.
By Patricia Foreman, the co-author of the best selling sustainable agriculture books:
• Backyard Market Gardening: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Selling What You Grow,
• Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil and,
• Day Range Poultry: Every Chicken Owner’s Guide to Grazing Gardens and Improving Pastures.
and more surburban and city dwellers to keep laying hens in their backyards and gardens.
It's time to think outside the coop,
and inside the city!
Praise for City Chicks
"City Chicks is a revelation! It's time someone connected gardenng to raising and keeping hens. This book is filled with excellent adice so that everyone can confidently practice good earth stewardship, not to mention have a prize garden!".
—Michael Metallo,
President, National Gardening Association
"City Chicks is all about how chickens fit in with so many other common needs and concerns of our century. This is a book for our times".
— JD Belanger, Editor Emeritus
Backyard Poultry Magazine
