First Time Chicken Keeping

I am a recent chicken farmer but have had small flocks in prior years so I am not a complete novice. I found First Time Chicken Keeping to be a very useful resource. I wish I had it on hand while I was incubating. It is very comprehensive but easy to understand and the pictures make it a nice package. It covers from the very beginning of choosing your chicken breed through the chicken's maturity and what can happen. It would be a good resource to keep on your shelf as you never know when your next chicken issue may occur. Be careful though, nothing is cuter than baby chicks and it is easy to become addicted to chickens. I hope the author moves on to ducks because I need that book too.

https://mkathleen419.wixsite.com/muthagoosefarms
ARC received from NetGalley for an honest review.

First Time Chicken Keeping is a reformat and re-release tutorial instruction guide for the new backyard chicken wrangler. Originally published in 2011 and revised in 2017, this third edition is due out 11th Aug 2020 from Quarto on their Quarry imprint. It's 128 pages and will be available in paperback format.

This is a compact, well written, accessible guide to sourcing, choosing, and succeeding with chickens. This guide presupposes no prior experience and covers all the basics including researching zoning laws, preparing a suitable home which will keep your flock healthy and protected, a -really- good chapter on incubating eggs, to brooding, feeding, management, and troubleshooting. For a short(ish) book, it's quite comprehensive and will definitely provide enough good factual information to help new keepers avoid the most common mistakes. Sidebars throughout highlight important information keeping it easier to find. The photography throughout is clear and easy to follow.

The book also includes a short glossary and resource links list as well as a cross referenced index.

This would make a good selection for the smallholder's library or for anyone information-gathering before making the commitment to start a home flock.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

Hesitating to buy chickens? This first time chicken keeping is a fun filled and knowledgeable guide about the enjoyment of having your very own chickens. From the coop to the poop. Everything you could possibly want to know about raising a chicken.

What did I like? Book offers a decent amount of pictures and instruction for raising chickens. I had a couple of chickens as a kid but we never put them in a coop just the barn. So the book offers detailed instructions for coop raised chickens and the basics of hatching and keeping your chickens healthy.

Would I buy or recommend? I’d buy a copy and definitely recommend. The book is very detailed, and while I have never raised coop chickens it answered a ton of questions I had. Finding the right chicken, feeding it, and keeping the chicken healthy were the basics of this book.

I received a copy of this book to read and offer an opinion. I enjoyed it and found it really helpful. Five useful stars.

A really neat and thorough instructional book about keeping chickens in an urban setting. This manual is fantastic and laid out very simply with tons of information and instructions and wonderful illustrations. Topics covered include, but not limited to: benefits of keeping chickens, choosing breeds, incubating eggs, crafting a coop and area, maintenance and care, etc. This would be a great book for anyone curious about keeping chickens.

Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for providing this ARC.

What a great book to learn about keeping chickens! We are about to embrace this new journey of keeping chickens and we found all kinds of helpful information and tips. A comprehensive guide, without being too overwhelming for first time chicken keepers.

This was an interesting book. I used to have chickens but had predators kill them and I haven’t got any new ones. This book gave a lot of recommendations on how to keep predators from getting my chickens again in the future. There was other information that I could use too. I’m glad that I got the chance to read this and I will recommend it to others who are thinking about getting chickens of their own.

For the past couple of years now I’ve been talking about getting some chickens for the back garden. We have recently moved house and have plenty of space to do this. So, when I saw this book on NetGalley, it’s not the typical type of book I request from there, it seemed like fate!
It is such an interesting and insightful read, I certainly learnt a lot. The advice is all very clear and fun to read. Who knew there were so many types of chickens and that specific ones lay a certain colour of eggs!?!
The guidance and help are a little overwhelming, and it has made me question whether getting chickens is for me. I’m certainly glad I read this book as I didn’t know all of the ins and outs, but I do now! There is so much work that needs to go into having back garden chickens. It’s certainly not something to do on a whim and is a real investment. I’d never even considered needing a separate space altogether for sick chickens to be quarantined.
The book is easy to read and has loads of awesome pictures of chickens and chicks. A really great read and one I would recommend to anyone that wants to get chickens in their back garden.
Small note this is mainly aimed at an American audience, so things on permits and laws don’t apply to the UK (where I was reading it) but certainly something to look into in my home country!

This was a really good book for first time chicken owners, as the title suggests. There is a lot of information about all the different aspects of chicken keeping. It is also a good resource to look back to even after you've had chickens for a while. Topics such as, nutrition, safety, hatching chicks, coops and runs, and all about chickens are well-covered. This is a great starting point for backyard chicken keeping.

The author has fulfilled what he promised in the title of this book: he truly gives advice to begin, step by step, to raise chickens regardless of whether it is the first time we are going to do it.
First Time Chicken Keeping: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Keeping Chickens - A Step-by-Step Manual to Getting Started with Chickens covers all the bases: from the best breeds, to the construction of a chicken coop, through the most common diseases and how to isolate our chickens from potential predators. And all this in a very agile, practical and enjoyable way. It really is a book that everyone interested in raising chickens should read!

As the title states, this is a step by step guide for the beginner. A useful introduction to how to set up and begin keeping chickens. Would recommend.