Hatching & Brooding Your Own Chicks: Chickens, Turkeys, Ducks, Geese, Guinea Fowl
Once a chicken fancier has decided to raise birds for home or commercial markets, a choice arises between buying the chicks or breeding and hatching them oneself. Damerow draws on her own experience for this comprehensive and accessible guide to all matters incubatory. With lots of photographs and plenty of practical data, she outlines parameters for heat, light, feed, and water sources so critical to chicks’ nutrition and growth. She also discusses the hatching process and the diseases that can appear in even the best-managed hatcheries. She explains the mysterious method for determining the little birds’ sex and how to assess their health from body language. Damerow’s guidance embraces not just chickens but also turkeys, ducks, geese, and guinea fowl. Burgeoning interest in locavorism and in humane animal breeding make this a potentially useful addition for library collections in just about all communities, not just for traditional rural institutions. --Mark Knoblauch