Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces | 
|  | | | Title: | Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces | | Author: | Barbara Kilarski | | Publisher: | Storey Publishing, LLC | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 30 June, 2003 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 1580174914 / 9781580174916 | | List Price: | $16.95 | | You Save: | $5.42 | | Amazon Price: | $11.53 | |
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Product Description
Chickens are hot! There's a chicken-farming boomlet on the rise, with upscale urban and suburban homeowners from every part of the country ordering fancy breeds of chickens, hiring architects to build elegant chicken coops in their backyards, and signing up for classes on how to raise a happy, healthy flock in a small space.Now Barbara Kilarski, a woman with a passion for poultry, offers a handbook that is as practical and encouraging as it is witty and entertaining. THE TOWN & COUNTRY CHICKEN provides the detailed information every aspiring chickenkeeper needs to know. Like home-grown vegetables, home-raised chickens put us in touch with our rural past, give us a sense of self-sufficiency, and provide food - eggs! - for the table that is a lot tastier than anything we could find at the supermarket. And chickens are fun! Like dogs, they bond with their owners, and like kids, they do the darnedest things. Kilarski regales the reader with tales spotlighting the joys of raising chickens, while at the same time explaining the nitty-gritty details of how to be a successful chicken keeper. Any way you look at it, chickens are a star of the domestic household. They are easy and inexpensive to raise, they don't need much living space, and they provide eggs for free. No dog or cat on the planet can make the same claim.
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Customer Reviews:
• Keep Chickens And A Computer 22 May, 2008
This was too basic of a book for me. Just about all the information in it I had found online on websites and forums. I wanted something beyond the basic, more detailed information. There are some color pictures in the middle of the book but otherwise it's not worth buying.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2WRQXLG8KK5YU
• Charming Except For One Thing... 13 January, 2008
I love the simplicity of this little book. The author makes it sound so doable to keep chickens in the city. However, I was dismayed to read that she so flippantly suggests using poison as way to manage rats, who are inevitably drawn to the chicken feed. Well, the problem with poisoning rats--who die of a "bad stomache" as she describes it -- is that these rats not only suffer a horribly cruel demise but also could be eaten by predators such as raptors who will suffer a similar end. I know this very thing happened in San Francisco, where the red tailed hawk population was affected by rat poison placed in Golden Gate Park.
I am just surprised that a book published by an "eco friendly" company would allow such a cavalier recommendation to use a method that is anything but eco-friendly in the larger sense. I love chickens but there is a larger world and context beyond them. Still, it is useful and enjoyable how-to on raising chickens, and if it were minus the presumptious attitude about ridding the coop of rats it would be something I'd recommend.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A31BSWQTD1JL6S
• Share The Love Of Chickens! 25 January, 2008
I bought this book just as I was starting my flock of five hens. Barbara does such a great job of conveying how amusing and interesting it is to share life with these girls! They each have their own personality (chickenality?) There's enough practical information to get a small flock up and running, pecking their way into your hearts. I like that she highlights the many benefits they can provide to your garden - in addition to the amazing eggs. Another major plus - this is one chicken book that doesn't talk about meat production.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AFIPBY1S1SNRU
• Not Very Useful 11 February, 2008
I didn't find this book very useful. First, it is a slim volume to start with, so it is not really very comprehensive.
Half of it is the author just sort of rambling on about her chickens. She includes lots of stories about her chickens, how she decided to keep chickens, other people's reactions to her chickens, etc. I found this part somewhat charming but not really helpful in any way. And after a while, it got kind of annoying [like someone telling stories about their children incessantly - kids you've never met - and just going on and on. Our children tend to be cuter and funnier to *us* than they are to strangers - after a while I'd had enough of cutsie stories about how adorable she thinks her personal chickens are].
Then the other half of the book is some really, REALLY basic information on getting chickens and raising them. But the information is so simplistic that if you have already read ANY other book on raising chickens, then you know far more than you are going to get from this book.
Some of the information she included was just kind of strange... like saying that you have to line your brooder cage with either rags, towels, or old socks and then throw them out every day and line the cage with different rags, towels, or socks.... not only have I never seen that advice in ANY other chicken book [and I've built quite a library at this point], but that seems like it could get really expensive pretty quick... how many socks am I willing to waste lining a brooder box with fresh socks every day?
She also says you need to feed your chickens cottage cheese and spinach every day....
She also is kind of on the extreme end when it comes to chickens - if you have even the faintest idea that you might eat one of your chickens one day, DON'T bother with this book. The author considers anyone who would eat their chicken to be a cruel monster. The author talks about chickens as beloved pets and really personifies them to the point that the fact that they are domesticated animals reared to be food for thousands of years is completely lost on her. [Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to eat my 5 little hens either - I just don't have the heart for chicken slaying personally - but I found it bizarre that the author of a book about keeping chickens would be "animal rights-ish" to the point of implying that someone who would kill and eat their chicken is evil.....]
There were other things that made the book an odd read too. The author keeps mentioning her "spouse" - the spouse is never given a name or referred to as anything other than "my spouse", in a way that is actually very awkward. I suspect that the spouse might be a same sex partner because of the way pronouns were so carefully and awkwardly avoided - it was just odd. It seemed to me that she needed to either honor the spouse with a name and a personality or leave the spouse out of the book entirely. It was weird reading it the way it is written.
So, I have to say all in all, this is an odd little book that I would recommend skipping. [I should have taken this one out at the library first I guess!]. I think the beginning chicken keeper would find "Living With Chickens" to be FAR more useful and entertaining.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A4FFK8M1P0Y9
• A Book That Made Me Chicken Out 14 June, 2008
I admit that I bought this book mostly for its entertainment value. I mean, several customer reviewers claim that the author must be a lesbian. Obviously, a book about CHICKENS which prompts *such* comments must be worth reading, LOL.
The author, Barbara Kilarski, lives in a suburb (?) of Portland, Oregon. Apparently, many US cities permit the keeping of chickens within city limits, something absolutely verboten here in Sweden. Kilarski, being a green-waver of sorts (there is much "sixties" rethoric in this booklet), decided to build a henhouse in her own backyard, in order to get fresh eggs every day, not to mention fertilizer for her garden plants (read chicken poop). Her three hens are almost like pets. She has given them personal names (Zsa Zsa, Lucy and Whoopee), and refer to them collectively as The Girls. Kilarski has even installed a TV camera inside the henhouse, so she can watch what the chickens are doing when out of sight. Yes, there is entertainment value in this book! In fact, a large part of the book isn't about chicken-tending in general, but about Kilarski herself, her neighbors, and (surprise) The Girls.
As for the how-to-do-it information in this rather short book (150 pages), I personally wouldn't keep even three chickens based on "Keep Chickens". The information is just to basic. Indeed, very often the advise goes something like "Make a contractor build the henhouse for you" or "Call the vet". However, I did glean one thing from the book: keeping chickens, even just three of them in a city backyard, is extremely time-consuming, expensive, and probably not worth it anyway. I guess you can say that the book made me CHICKEN OUT!
:D
OK, seriously. One of Barbara Kilarski's main points is that tending a small flock of chicken within city (and city ordinance) limits is easy and rewarding. Judging by her own description, however, it's not very easy, and easily takes up all your spare time, and more (the author doesn't seem to have kids). First, you need to build a henhouse and a coop, and even install electricity inside it, to drive the fens and heat lamps. The hens need PLENTY of food and water every day, and no, you can't just feed them scraps from your table. You need to clean the henhouse and coop at least twice a week, and both it and your house will be in constant danger of infestation by rats! They love the chicken food (and the eggs?). You even have to clean the hens themselves from time to time, to make sure they aren't infected by mites. I also got the impression that The Girls regarded their coop as to small, which forced the author to occasionally let them out into her garden. Once there, Kilarski had to chase the chickens with a broomstick to make sure they didn't destroy her flowery bushes! Somehow, this doesn't strike me as your avarage parakeet or golden hamster...
I got the impression that Kilarski puts up with all this not because she wants to be "self-reliant on food" (she really isn't - she is buying all the chicken food at a feed store) but simply because she is OBSESSED with chicken. I mean, a web cam inside the henhouse??!!
Well, I guess there's nothing wrong with being obsessed with chickens, per se. I'm more into magpies myself, heh heh. Still, I wonder whether tending chickens in Portland (!) is really such a good idea. Why not move to a smaller city, and give Da Girlz more space?
I'm not sure how to rate this book. Is it a fun read? Yes, definitively. This is the kind of book I would read on the plane, or on a long and tedious train trip. But is it really a how-to book? Despite its best pretentions, naah. It's more like a propaganda tract for chicken keeping, or perhaps an inspirational book to chicken-lovers, due to the personal anecdotes.
In the end, I settle for a compromise and give it THREE STARS.
Kentucky Fried Chicken, anyone?
:-)
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2VMT89TCSF105
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