Keeping chickens isn't just for farms! The backyard chicken revolution has coops popping up in neighborhoods all over. Home-raised chickens provide a great source of superior, organic eggs that are as close as your backyard. Chickens also make good pets and provide free fertilizer—and lots of fun. Backyard Chickens Guide offers plans and photos for 16 custom coops built by real chicken owners, (including three portable designs known as tractors). Read their stories and learn from their experiences, then head out to the backyard to start your own flock.

Jill Winger, creator of the award-winning blog The Prairie Homestead, introduces her debut The Prairie Homestead Cookbook, including 100+ delicious, wholesome recipes made with fresh ingredients to bring the flavors and spirit of homestead cooking to any kitchen table. With a foreword by bestselling author Joel Salatin The Pioneer Woman Cooks meets 100 Days of Real Food, on the Wyoming prairie. While Jill produces much of her own food on her Wyoming ranch, you don’t have to grow all—or even any—of your own food to cook and eat like a homesteader. Jill teaches people how to make delicious traditional American comfort food recipes with whole ingredients and shows that you don’t have to use obscure items to enjoy this lifestyle. And as a busy mother of three, Jill knows how to make recipes easy and delicious for all ages. "Jill takes you on an insightful and delicious journey of becoming a homesteader. This book is packed with so much easy to follow, practical, hands-on information about steps you can take towards integrating homesteading into your life. It is packed full of exciting and mouth-watering recipes and heartwarming stories of her unique adventure into homesteading. These recipes are ones I know I will be using regularly in my kitchen." - Eve Kilcher These 109 recipes include her family’s favorites, with maple-glazed pork chops, butternut Alfredo pasta, and browned butter skillet corn. Jill also shares 17 bonus recipes for homemade sauces, salt rubs, sour cream, and the like—staples that many people are surprised to learn you can make yourself. Beyond these recipes, The Prairie Homestead Cookbook shares the tools and tips Jill has learned from life on the homestead, like how to churn your own butter, feed a family on a budget, and experience all the fulfilling satisfaction of a DIY lifestyle.

A fresh approach to designing and building chicken coops with seven stylish designs that your flock will adore and your neighbors will envy. Hop on board the backyard chicken raising trend! Use your woodworking skills and the fun designs in this book to build your flock a stylish coop.

Inside these pages, you will find step-by-step instructions for a mobile broiler chicken shelter for pastured poultry that is used by farmers and homesteaders all over the country. Raising chickens on grass provides them with a healthy lifestyle and a delicious flavor. You can raise just enough of them to feed your family or scale up to include pastured poultry as a profitable part of your farm business. John Suscovich has raised thousands of chickens using these mobile shelters, a main enterprise on his farm in Connecticut. These chicken tractors were created using the best elements from other designs. They are easy to move and provide a good life for the chickens. With a little bit of creativity, they can also be modified for seasonal egg-layer housing, rabbits, ducks and forts for your kids. Not only does this book contain the plans and supply list to build your first chicken tractor, but it gives you some insight into how to use it and what mindset you should have if you are to become a happy and successful farmer. John also walks you through the light carpentry skills you need to build these chicken tractors and teaches you the most commonly used knots on a farm. You may learn these skills for this project, but you'll be able to apply them on your farm for years to come.

The backyard chicken is the new "it" pet—and with good reason: These birds are personable, beautiful, and (mostly) low maintenance. But they're not without their quirks and sometimes puzzling behaviors. That's where the experts at MyPetChicken.com have a beak up on the competition—they hear from chicken keepers daily and offer advice about common mistakes and pitfalls that occur when raising a flock of chickens in the backyard. And customers tell them that the advice they most appreciate is actually how not to raise chickens, what not to do, and why not to panic. The handbook helps potential chicken owners decide whether chicken keeping is right for them, how to make the best choices for their situations, how to start planning for the new pets, and—most importantly—how to head off potential trouble before the chicks arrive. Detailed care instructions for baby chicks and mature hens help to ensure a friendly and enjoyable flock. Covering both the good and the "oh no" experiences that beginners and avid backyard farmers experience, topics include choosing coops, planning a daily routine, learning about sanitation practices, and discovering signs of distress. Then the joy of chicken keeping comes full "ovoid" with 50 recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, featuring the incredible and versatile egg, from homemade egg noodles and sesame mayonnaise to a vegetable frittata and caramel custard.

Best-selling author Melissa Caughey knows that backyard chickens are like any favorite pet — fun to spend time with and fascinating to observe. Her hours among the flock have resulted in this quirky, irresistible guide packed with firsthand insights into how chickens communicate and interact, use their senses to understand the world around them, and establish pecking order and roles within the flock. Combining her up-close observations with scientific findings and interviews with other chicken enthusiasts, Caughey answers unexpected questions such as Do chickens have names for each other? How do their eyes work? and How do chickens learn? Foreword INDIES Silver Award Winner

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.