Chick Lit – Review of Free Range Chicken Gardens

Free Range Chicken Gardens by Jessi Bloom is about a subject dear to my heart. When I lived in Oregon on 3 acres of land I had a dozen chickens and loved them! They were easy to care for and, once you build a pen and coop for them, they don’t take that much work and these chickens give you the most
luscious eggs with dark yellow, nutritious yolks too.

These days you don’t need acreage to raise chickens. Raising backyard chickens is gaining in popularity as people like the idea of raising their own

New Book on Free Range Chickens in Your Back Yard

food. Nowadays, we like to know where our food is coming from. Backyard chickens are a wonderful experience too for children and the birds quickly become pets. This way,  kids get the connection between what they are eating and where it actually comes form. Of course, you may never get them to eat chicken from the store anymore after they’ve raised their own!

Free Range Chicken Gardens is subtitled How to Create a Beautiful Chicken Friendly Yard, a topic which makes Jessi’s book different than other books on how to raise backyard chickens. I was especially interested in this because, when I had chickens, I only let them out to run around for about an hour a day. If you haven’t read Jessi’s book, they can be murder on landscape since they don’t know a weed from a precious plant and will claw plants up by the roots to get at bugs.

So, I wondered, is it really possible to have a beautiful garden and raise chickens too? Jessi Bloom says yes. She explains how to view your garden as a habitat for your birds. Your chickens can be totally free range or partially free range (which is what I had) and you can still have a beautiful garden area.

Free Range Chicken Gardens also cover the basics of starting your own flock, discussing the different breeds and care and feeding of backyard chickens, plus benefits like eating all the pesky bugs in your garden (I never had slugs when I had chickens) and how to deal with compost.

The book offers great tips on confining the chickens. I loved the chapter on designing coops – lots of cute ideas and photos! Jesse also discusses different types of fencing options, including materials to use. Lots and lots of design strategies for creating a garden that suits your style, where you and your flock can happily co-exist.

There is an extensive plant listing, with lists of chicken=friendly plants, plants that are poisonous to chickens and plants which offer cover and protection to your flock. Even chicken friendly mulches are discussed.

Interspersed among the chapters of Free Range Chicken Gardens are delightful stories and photos of different families who raise backyard chickens. Seeing cute little kids cuddling their favorite hen is a wonderful sight. It’s also very interesting to see the different chicken coop designs and how they can fit into your landscaping.

One thing I especially loved about this book is the photos! Jessi has a dozen chickens of her own and the chicken photography is wonderful. Of course, as I said, I have a soft spot for chickens.

Back when I got my own chickens, I wish I’d had a book like Free Range Chicken Gardens to help me better design my garden and my chicken habitat. Many things I learned only by trial and error were well laid out in Jessi Bloom’s book and it would have saved me a lot of time and trouble. I still miss having my own backyard chickens and hope at some point to have some again. If you have a backyard flock or you’re thinking of getting one, I would highly recommend this book as part of your poultry library.

Publication Date for Free Range Garden Chickens is January 8, 2012 and it’s available on Amazon.com for pre-order. My thanks to Timber Press for providing me an advanced copy for review.

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