Synopses & Reviews
If you want to incubate, hatch, and brood chicks yourself, rather than buying them from a hatchery, this is the guide you need. Poultry authority Gail Damerow explains exactly how to hatch healthy baby chickens, ducklings, goslings, turkey poults, and guinea keets, addressing everything from selecting a breed and choosing the best incubator to ensuring proper set-up and sanitary conditions, understanding embryo development, and feeding and caring for newborn chicks in a brooder. This is an indispensable reference for any poultry raiser, whether you want to hatch three eggs or one hundred.
Review
"This know-all chicken manual could serve as a college textbook"
Review
"Gail Damerow continues to educate, entertain, and astound us with her detailed coverage of all-things-chicken, this time with seldom-encountered facts and tips on hatching and brooding. ... Add this one to the already long list of Gail Damerow books that belong in every poultry lover's library."
Review
"Background information, illustrations, and thorough instructions abound throughout this thoughtfully organized work. In addition to sections devoted to the selection, care, feeding, and development of eggs and chicks, this guide features a glossary and a comprehensive index. ... for those seeking reliable instructions on brooding and hatching a variety of fowl, the book is outstanding."
Synopsis
Gail Damerow shows you how to incubate, hatch, and brood baby chickens, ducklings, goslings, turkey poults, and guinea keets. With advice on everything from selecting a breed and choosing the best incubator to feeding and caring for newborn chicks in a brooder, this comprehensive guide also covers issues like embryo development, panting chicks, and a variety of common birth defects. Whether you want to hatch three eggs or one hundred, you'll find all the information you need to make your poultry-raising operation a success.
Synopsis
From Fertilized Egg to Baby Chick and Beyond
About the Author
Gail Damerow, author of The Chicken Health Handbook, 2nd Edition, has written extensively on raising chickens and other livestock, growing fruits and vegetables, and related rural know-how in more than a dozen country skills how-to books, including the best-selling Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens, The Chicken Encyclopedia, and Hatching and Brooding Your Own Chicks. Damerow is a regular contributor to Backyard Poultry and Countryside magazines. She lives in Tennessee with her husband, where they operate a family farm with poultry and dairy goats, a sizable garden, and a small orchard.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1: The Chicks
1 Acquiring Your First Chicks
2 Setting Up Your Brooder
3 Managing Water, Feed, and Bedding
4 What to Expect as They Grow
5 Hatchling Health Issues