Backyard Chickens
Backyard Chickens | City Chicken | Backyard Poultry
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Backyard Chickens
Backyard Chickens Crash Course Raising Backyard Chickens For Fun & Food Rebecca D. Powers
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder. Copyright Š 2013
Backyard Chickens | City Chicken | Backyard Poultry
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Backyard Chickens
Backyard Chickens | City Chicken | Backyard Poultry
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Backyard Chickens
Introduction Welcome to Backyard Chickens Crash Course - Raising Backyard Chickens For Fun & Food! This one image pretty much says it all‌
Backyard Chickens | City Chicken | Backyard Poultry
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Backyard Chickens
Backyard chicken-keeping can be a fun and rewarding experience. Besides being enjoyable to watch and interact with, chickens also provide a regular supply of fresh eggs. However, not many people realize what a benefit their flock can be for their vegetable garden. I’d like to share with you some of the ways they can help. Fertilizer Like most birds, chickens tend to poop a lot. According to the University of Missouri's agricultural extension, a fourpound layer hen can produce anywhere between one and 3.5 ounces of manure daily. With an average flock size of six hens, that works out to roughly 137 to 480 pounds of manure annually. Chickens fed a quality diet will produce nutritionally superior manure, which is one of the best natural fertilizers available. However, it's important that you thoroughly compost all manure before using it on your plants. Because of its richness in nitrogen, using it straight from the chicken can damage plants' roots and foliage. Pest Control Chickens are ravenous scavengers and are always on the Backyard Chickens | City Chicken | Backyard Poultry
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Backyard Chickens
hunt for the next tasty morsel. By turning them loose in your vegetable patch every day, you can harness their natural pest-controlling benefits. Your flock will happily devour any and all bugs including slugs, snails, cabbage worms, squash bugs, tomato hornworms, cutworms and pillbugs. Letting them loose to feed on pests will also provide your chickens with a reliable source of quality protein, helping them to produce tastier and more nutritious eggs. Soil Aeration Chickens like to scratch at the ground to unearth seeds, bugs and worms to eat. This natural feeding activity benefits your vegetable garden by tilling the soil surface. It allows better oxygenation of the soil, which makes plants' roots stronger and better able to transport moisture and nutrients. Scratching also helps to improve soil quality by mixing in organic matter from the surface and preventing crusting. Compost and Mulch Chickens require bedding, the most popular of which are straw, rice hulls, hay, saw dust, peat moss and wood shavings. Naturally, they will have to be changed out occasionally, but there's no need to worry about waste. All of these materials can be placed into the compost heap and turned into rich soils amendments that also help to hold in moisture. If you don't want to wait for the materials to compost, Backyard Chickens | City Chicken | Backyard Poultry
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Backyard Chickens
however, they can be placed directly on the surface of your vegetable garden to act as convenient mulch.
How Chickens Fertilize Your Garden Chickens are an excellent source of both food and fertilizer. Their prolific pooping means that you will have an ample supply of manure to spread on your garden. However, it absolutely must be composted in order to be usable. Many inexperienced chickenkeepers have mistakenly spread fresh droppings and killed their plants as a result. The nitrogen content is simply too high. Despite this, having a chicken poo in your garden occasionally is unavoidable if it's free-range. With such a small amount, no damage should result. It will likely be quickly broken down by worms, carrion bugs and microorganisms. Rain or hose water will also help to dilute the manure and distribute it over the soil. You could consider it as a sort of time-release fertilizer. These animals are also a valuable asset for the home composter. Anyone who has tried maintaining a compost heap will tell you that it's often tedious and back-breaking work. That pile has to be turned regularly in order for it to decompose properly. However, your involvement in this step can be eliminated with the help of a small flock of chickens. If you have a small yard set up for your birds, then you already have the ideal beginnings of a chicken-assisted compost heap. It's recommended to cover part of the bottom with a layer of leaves, straw or wood shavings several inches thick. If you want you can use your flock's spent bedding. You can also toss your existing compost heap into the chicken yard and use that as your base layer. Toss all of your regular compostable materials here and let the Backyard Chickens | City Chicken | Backyard Poultry
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Backyard Chickens
chickens be chickens. They'll gladly forage on any seeds, insects and kitchen scraps that are in the pile adding a steady supply of manure in the process. This saves you money on feed and produces superior-quality eggs. Best of all the birds' scratching habits will keep everything properly mixed without you having to lift a finger. After a month or two, you'll have a pile of rich, dark compost that can be used on your garden. Just sprinkle it on as you would any other compost and till it into the soil, which is another step that can be left to the birds. Click here to continue reading the Backyard Chickens Crash Course - Raising Backyard Chickens For Fun & Food Breakfast... dinner... and entertainment! That's what you get when you have your own backyard chickens and other backyard poultry. In the morning (or anytime of the day) if you are raising chickens for eggs then you get to have fresh organic eggs harvested from your own backyard from you own family of layers. For lunch or dinner you can have antibiotic free, fresh organic chicken meat. And for all around fun while raising chickens you get to watch your baby chicks chirp their way to adulthood and as adults the scratching, digging, pecking, running and fighting brings both a pleasurable and peaceful experience. Backyard Chickens | City Chicken | Backyard Poultry
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Backyard Chickens
The life of a backyard chicken owner isn't work; it's a labor of love that brings lasting smiles and healthy nutritious food. From chicken breeds to chicken feeds... from chicken coops to chicken poop, inside the "Backyard Chickens Crash Course" you get the short cuts to how to raise chickens successfully and benefiting from your own flock of backyard chickens. I'm not a writer talking about owning chickens, I'm a chicken owner writing from experience to help you side step the pitfalls, save both you and your chickens grief and make sure both you and your chickens have a long mutually healthy experience. If you want to experience the multitude of benefits that only having chickens can bring, then click here to download a copy of the "Backyard Chickens Crash Course" to your Kindle reader today and learn how to raise backyard chickens for fun and food.
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