Free download: Our guide to raising chickens
You’ve read our story, and followed our blog — now get Team Chicken‘s advice in one handy download.
In our guide to backyard chickens:
• Are chickens for you? 6 questions to ask
• Materials, prices, and sources
• What chicks and hens need
• Why you don’t need a rooster
• Where to get advice
• And more helpful info
More to come!
I love the chicken story. We found a pet feed store that sells grown chickens near Los Angeles, in Huntington Park! With in a week we found eggs!
Hi Allie,
Try this link: http://img4.sunset.com/static/pdf/OneBlock_Chicken.pdf
That should work for you!
Thanks for reading.
The link for this isn’t working. I hope to see it soon.
http://www.sunset.com/sunset/i/misc/pdfs/OneBlock_Chicken.pdf
Hi, Ruth. Actually, one of the people we consulted about chicken-rearing–Jody Main, who teaches classes on the subject at Common Ground Organic Garden Supply, in Palo Alto, CA–recommended straw and uses it herself. The feed store that supplied our chicks recommended straw too. Clearly we can’t carry on with it, given that we have a straw-eating chicken (none of the other chickens seem interested in the stuff). We’ve removed all possible straw from the coop, you’ll be happy to know, and are thinking about putting down pine shavings. We hope they seem a lot less delicious than straw!
Who told you city slickers to use straw for chicken scratch? I haven’t studied the entire blog, but it doesn’t look like Ophelia’s clogged-up crop, which required surgical intervention, taught you that the straw might be dangerous. Wood shavings, dried lawn clippings – there are plenty smaller organic absorbant compounds that will get the same result without making a medical emergency for a bird that confused straw with something more digestible.
Great stuff, thanks. I’m going to help a friend start a backyard flock soon — my job, which will be more like a treat, will be to build the coop — and this info will be invaluable.
I’d love to see a sketch, floorplan, or long-view photograph of the coop & compound.
I LOVED this story – ever bit and piece of it. We’ve been hemming and hawing about getting chickens – your story actually makes it sound doable. Thanks for a great read and confidence builder. Now if we could just grow some decent grapes without a greenhouse here in southcentral Alaska!