The Small-Scale Poultry Flock
If Attracting
Native Pollinators
is the prettiest homesteading-related book of 2011, The
Small-Scale Poultry Flock
is the most thought-provoking. You can read my gushing review on
our chicken blog, along with my summary of Ussery's most interesting
points:
Breeding
small flocks of chickens --- Homestead-scale tips on
growing better birds.
Choosing
mother hens ---
Breeds and traits that make good broody hens.
Chicken
feed: Beyond the basics --- Chicken food groups,
mangels, and more.
Keeping chickens happy in the winter --- Ussery has a variety of
tips for dealing with this tough time of year.
Eating
the whole chicken
--- Parts of the bird you never knew were a delicacy. (Mountain
oysters, anyone?)
Diversifying
your poultry flock
--- Did you know you can train geese to weed your garden?
I would have made the
book a lunchtime series over here, but as you can see, I couldn't
summarize it in five posts. In fact, there are dozens of
fascinating tidbits in his book that I didn't manage to fit into a post
--- go read it!
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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What do you do to prevent/ deal with worms,mites, and lice in chickens. Looking for natural prevention. Thinking DE or wood ash for dusting but not sure on worms.
cab --- We've never really had any of those problems. I always figure an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so we keep our flock on pasture at all times and promote a healthy coop with deep bedding (adding new bedding anytime I see manure standing on the surface).
Here's what one of our readers has to say about mite prevention.