Review of "The Joy of Keeping Chickens" by Jennifer Megyesi
By Mark Daymond
The full title of the book is "The Joy of Keeping Chickens: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Poultry for Fun or Profit," which is a curious title, or the "profit" part anyway as poultry keeping is not known for it high profit margins. Leaving that aside, the book sets out to do what it describes and be the "ultimate guide" covering all imaginable aspects of keeping chickens. It starts by asking "why keep chickens?" and describes how the author started her journey by encountering a truck full of barely living chickens that had spent their lives as battery hens and having completed their useful laying life of one year, were en route to being slaughtered. And it was this moment of re-establishing the link between the way in which chickens are kept to the food on our table that began a complete change in lifestyle. Jennifer Megyesi now owns the Fat Rooster Farm in Vermont.
The book includes detailed useful information on making plans for keeping chickens, through to hatching, housing, feeding, eggs, keeping chickens for meat, showing and common ailments. So "The Joy..." guides you through all stages in great detail with useful charts and plenty of beautiful colour pictures throughout. The description of the various breeds, whilst not exhaustive, is certainly more than adequate for most people.
There are certainly a number of features of that this book has that I have not seen in others such as a guide for making up your own chicken feed, recipes for eggs and using chicken meat including canning (I will admit that as a vegetarian I only skimmed over that part!). I was particularly interested in the section in using and keeping eggs, particularly in relation to storage where freezing, canning and other storage methods are discussed.
What I really like about this book is that the author's passion and enthusiasm shines through every page. The book is not simply a dry "how-to" textbook — in between guides on such things as hatching and exhibiting poultry there are little personal anecdotes and reflections related to the subject matter. All this make for an extremely readable guide which kept my attention throughout. This is accompanied by beautiful photography which perfectly compliment the writing.
My only quibble (and this is really very very minor) the book is written from a U.S. perspective, so there are a few parts that are not that relevant to people in other parts of the world - coyotes are not exactly a problem here in the U.K.! Also the list of organizations, resources and suppliers are also entirely U.S. based. However, for readers in other parts of the world I do not feel this significantly detracts from the book and this only affects a very small proportion of the content. I wonder if there will be a U.K. specific version in the future.
In conclusion, I think The Joy of Keeping Chickens is an excellent book and equally useful for beginners and experienced poultry keepers alike and one I would certainly recommend.
Rating: 4.5/5
— Smallholder's Diary, published March 7, 2009
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