Chick Days - Raising Chickens, Jenna Woginrich - Review

Another in my 2012 season or reviews for the Eclectic Readers Challenge, Non-Fiction...

For my non-fiction book I had a range to choose from, I have read books about the Digital Economy, Sustainability, Tourism Trends, business, marketing... but they were all work related and not really for fun... But we recently came into some Chickens... Well Chicks, two week old Bantam's one white Chinese Silky the other a cross breed Silky and all thanks to my daughters pre-school.

The School had a little project running, they hired an egg hatcher-device and cage - got about a dozen eggs which hatched over 1 week. They kept the chicks for 2 more weeks as an educational tool for the kids. Boy, did the kids love it! They got to watch the eggs hatch, then help the chicks to learn to eat and move and learn about animals caring for them. Wonderful really.

We had talked about getting chickens for sometime. The back neighbour has been building a chicken coop and we wanted a smaller one for out little yard, bantams was the answer for us and the school batch had two! It was as if fate wanted us to have them! So indeed at the end of the project the chicks could either be bought by parents or they would go back to the company and be sold as pullets... we bough the two bantams.

Now I had chickens as a child myself (well my family did) and I did study Agriculture at High School - even ran an experiment on egg production and protein levels of food so I knew a bit about chickens before reading Chick Days, but even this old dog learnt a thing or two from the book.

The layout of Chick Days is very simple, easy to read and most of all, FUN!. Woginrich is so obviously in love with her girls and that affection bleeds out from the pages of the book not only in the fabulous photography by Mars Vilaubi but in the text and layout. This book takes you from the inception of the idea of getting chickens, through the first week days of raising chicks to pullets and layers and goes in depth to which breed is best for your needs.

I'm so glad we have our little 4 week old chicks, who are chirping away in the room next door (still too young to be outside yet - another 3 weeks to go) and I'm sure I would have been fine to get them started and up to laying without reading Chick Days, but I think my world and my chickens are better for it.

Great tool and read.

4/5