Free-Range Chicken Gardens: How To Create A Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard Download Free (EPUB, PDF)
Many gardeners fear chickens will peck away at their landscape, and chicken lovers often shy away from gardening for the same reason. But you can keep chickens and have a beautiful garden, too! In this essential handbook, award-winning garden designer Jessi Bloom offers step-by-step instructions for creating a beautiful and functional space and maintaining a happy, healthy flock. Free-Range Chicken Gardens covers everything a gardener needs to know, from the basics of chicken keeping and getting them acclimated to the garden, to how to create the perfect chicken-friendly garden design and build innovative coops.
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Timber Press; 1/15/12 edition (January 3, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1604692375
ISBN-13: 978-1604692372
Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.8 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (278 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #33,265 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #10 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Garden Design #30 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Animals > Birds & Birdwatching > Field Guides #31 in Books > Science & Math > Agricultural Sciences > Animal Husbandry
I love to look through decorating books and magazines, gardening books and magazines, chicken books (yeah, I've even read a few chicken magazines too--for reals) and I tend to feel them "worth it" when I take away a few ideas. I expected the same from this having felt it a novel idea to have a beautiful chicken-friendly yard (seeing as how I'm nothing short of a chicken activist I'm so chicken friendly) I was wowed. I came away with SO much more than a few ideas.This is not about simply making a yard friendly for hens. This is about having a gorgeous yard, with plants hens don't eat (and many they can!) that give your yard beauty and them shelter, having a yard that is stunning with beautiful coops, having a yard that is charming rather than barren...This is not one family's ideas of how to combine free-range chickens, natural fertilizer, organic pest control, soil aeration, fresh eggs if ya want those too, and thriving gardens...this is actually pages and pages of photos and ideas of many homes, yards, and gardens that are easy to recreate and are truly a uptopia for both owner and the winged who share it. (And by "free range" I do not mean no coop. That would be cruel and the hens would likely not live a week. Night predators such as raccoons etc are no match for a sleeping hen and hens know this so at dusk each night they put themselves to bed in your coop and wait for you to lock the door. And they hate rain. Whether part-time free-range and safely tucked away at night, or free-range inside a pretty run full-time, this still means daytime only of course)It's not easy to have a yard you want to wander through in beauty and hens who love to nibble sharing it. My side yard proves it.
This book has pretty pictures; that is the book's only positive trait. The book has numerous flaws, which have been covered by other reviewers. However, other reviewers haven't discussed the problem I had with this book: a severe lack of focus.Instead of focusing on the book's supposed subject--"How to Create a Beautiful Chicken-Friendly Yard"-- the author apparently decided she would rather superficially talk about many, MANY other topics. They include:1. Coop design (lots of pretty pictures, only one "how to do this" plan with measurements)2. Predator descriptions and deterrent methods (Mostly accurate info, but why is this discussed in a garden design book?)3. How to pick chicken breeds (In every basic chicken keeping book in the world--why waste valuable space in this supposedly specialized book with a rehash of that same information??)4. How to clip a chicken's wings, etc. (What does this have to do with garden design? The author may have her reasons, but doesn't explain them.)5. A brief rundown of other poultry types, including turkeys, geese, and ducks. (Huh?? Why are ducks discussed in a book that is supposed to be about chickens??)6. She wraps up the book by listing common chicken diseases and parasites. (?!?)I have had my chickens for almost 2 years and own many basic chicken keeping books; I didn't need another one. What I DID need was tips on how to incorporate my chickens into a garden--what plants to avoid, what plants they'd love, what plants would benefit from the extra nitrogen from chicken poop. Unfortunately, there is very little information of this sort included in the book, and what little there is is VERY difficult to find, even if using the index.
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