Gail Damerow has been raising chickens for more than four decades on a Tennessee family farm with poultry, dairy goats, a garden, and a small orchard. That experience shows on every page. This isn't a book written from research — it's a book written from years of coop mornings and hard-won flock management.
The fourth edition, published in 2017, covers the full arc of chicken keeping: choosing breeds for your climate and goals, building housing that works, understanding nutrition and feeding, managing a laying flock, hatching and brooding chicks, raising meat birds, and diagnosing health problems early enough to matter. The section on chicken behavior is particularly strong — Damerow incorporates current research into flock communication and social dynamics, which helps keepers read their birds rather than just react to problems.
For the preparedness household, chickens are one of the highest-return food investments available — eggs, meat, pest control, and garden fertility from a small footprint. This book is where that decision gets made well. It's also the reference you'll keep returning to year three and year ten as the flock evolves and the questions get more specific. We recommend it alongside our Food & Preservation guides and the self-reliance section for readers building land-based food systems.
