The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An all-natural approach to raising chickens and other fowl for home and market growers Author: Harvey Ussary Joel Salatin | Language: English | ISBN:
B00AKJ0E9I | Format: PDF
The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An all-natural approach to raising chickens and other fowl for home and market growers Description
The most comprehensive guide to date on raising all-natural poultry for the small-scale farmer, homesteader, and professional grower. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock offers a practical and integrative model for working with chickens and other domestic fowl, based entirely on natural systems.
Readers will find information on growing (and sourcing) feed on a small scale, brooding (and breeding) at home, and using poultry as insect and weed managers in the garden and orchard. Ussery's model presents an entirely sustainable system that can be adapted and utilized in a variety of scales, and will prove invaluable for beginner homesteaders, growers looking to incorporate poultry into their farm, or poultry farmers seeking to close their loop. Ussery offers extensive information on:
The definition of an integrated poultry flock (imitation of natural systems, integrating patterns, and closing the circle)
Everything you need to know about your basic chicken (including distinctive points about anatomy and behavior that are critical to management)
Extended information on poultry health and holistic health care, with a focus on prevention
Planning your flock (flock size, choosing breeds, fowl useful for egg vs. meat production, sourcing stock)
How to breed and brood the flock (including breeding for genetic conservation), including the most complete guide to working with broody hens available anywhere
Making and mixing your own feed (with tips on equipment, storage, basic ingredients, technique, grinding and mixing)
Providing more of the flock's feed from sources grown or self-foraged on the homestead or farm, including production of live protein feeds using earthworms and soldier grubs
Using poultry to increase soil fertility, control crop damaging insects, and to make compost-including systems for pasturing and for tillage of cover crops and weeds
Recipes for great egg and poultry dishes (including Ussery's famous chicken stock!)
And one of the best step-by-step poultry butchering guides available, complete with extensive illustrative photos.
No other book on raising poultry takes an entirely whole-systems approach, or discusses producing homegrown feed and breeding in such detail. This is a truly invaluable guide that will lead farmers and homesteaders into a new world of self-reliance and enjoyment.
- File Size: 24468 KB
- Print Length: 416 pages
- Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing; 1 edition (December 7, 2012)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00AKJ0E9I
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,293 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry - #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry - #98
in Books > Science & Math > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry
- #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry - #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry - #98
in Books > Science & Math > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry
If you are looking for a book on poultry READ THIS BOOK FIRST. It has made me completely rethink how we are going to manage our small flocks. This book is the real deal. You know it's got to be good when Joel Salatin writes your intro. These are the men I respect when it comes to natural, sustainable agriculture and livestock husbandry. I'm thrilled they are teaching the new wave of farmers that are adopting their practices. This is the exact information we need to start the long road of ending, or at least reducing, the factory farm conglomerates that are detrimental to our health (as well as the animals), and our food supply chain. Long live small, independent, natural farming the way it was intended to be!
I have read many books on backyard flocks but nothing compares to Harvey's book. I love Harvey's stories in Backyard poultry, Mother Earth News and Countryside magazines and was always hoping he would write a book. I have been anxiously awaiting for this to be published. I preordered immediately when it became available and waited paitently. It has by far passed all my expectations. The book chock full of pictures is simply amazing in it's depth and scope of knowledge for the small homesteader/farmsteader. From general poultry health, natural feed, promoting small farm sustainability and production, to using your chicks as a farming partner as composters and tillers, Harvey covers it all in depth and humour. Old wisdom with today's advancements thrown in makes the THE book to have in your livestock library.
I cannot state enough how good this book really is. Flock management used to be commonplace when we grew most of our food, but has been a dying art. Thanks to guys like Harvey and Joel a new wave of flock owners will have that knowledge passed on to them.
The Short Story:
In a nutshell, I was looking for a book that covered feeding my poultry flock with homegrown feed year-round, pasturing my flock without worry of predation (my property adjoins nearly 3 million acres of contiguous national forest land and this is a BIG concern for me), caring for my flock without the use of antibiotics and pesticides yet also without the hardcore Darwinian approach espoused by The Accidental Farmers, and integrating my poultry with my other homestead practices of gardening and rearing livestock. Frankly, I feel that this book delivered in every one of these categories...and then some. I had considered Joel Salatin's book Pastured Poultry Profits but chose to go with this book instead because it has a lot of the information I would've gotten from that book without the opinions/general preachiness/gripes that the man is notable for. It's not that I don't appreciate hearing and learning from others and stretching my mind with their points of view, it was simply that I was looking for a book about the poultry, the whole poultry, and nothing but the poultry, so help me God.
The Protracted Story:
Let me preface this review by saying that this is not the first poultry-keeping book I've bought, or check-out of the library or borrowed from a friend or pinched from the bookstore while the attendant's back was turned -- okay, just kidding on that last one, but you get the idea.
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