City Chicks: Keeping Micro-Flocks of Laying Hens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-Recyclers an

Chickens have become the mascot of the local food movement. A desire for sustainable, clean, wholesome food and superior soil quality has led more and more suburban and city dwellers to keep laying hens in their backyards and gardens. Learn how you can: - Be close to your food source with a continuous supply of fresh, heart-healthy eggs to feed yourself and others. - Take the best care of your chickens and find out where to buy them. - Learn how to be a chicken whisperer. - Improve your garden soil for super yields, superior flavor, and optimal nutrition. - Recycle food, grass clippings and yard waste, make compost and help reduce trash going to landfills, saving millions of municipal taxpayer dollars. - Help save millions of municipal tax payer dollars by diverting food and yard waste from landfills; instead create compost - with the help of your flock. - Raise baby chicks with items you already have. - Avoid getting roosters and why you don't want them. - Learn how to be a Poultry Primary Health Care Practitioner. - Make and use effective and inexpensive treatments for your flock as described in the Poultry's Pharmacy. Learn how others: - Have built urban chicken tractors, hen huts, condos and chicken chateaus to blend in with neighborhood landscape and architecture. - Join in urban eco-agro-tourism with annual coop & garden home tours for fund raising. - Start or join local poultry clubs. - Keep small flocks to help preserve endangered breeds of chickens. - Draft and pass local laws allowing laying hens within their town's limits. By the co-author of Chicken Tractor, Backyard Market Gardening and Day Range Poultry. City Chicks is a remarkable trend-setting book for poultry lovers and urban agriculturists. The imaginative and entertaining style of writing is combined with hands-on, real-life experience to bring you one of the most complete and authorative books on micro-flock management.