Gardening With Chickens:  Plans And Plants For You And Your Hens, by Lisa Steele

There are plenty of books about taking care of animals and plenty of books about gardening, but there are few books that seek to combine the two.  One of the more traditional byways of gardening (or farming) is doing companion farming, where one grows crops that provide and require complementary nutrients and so help each other out, like pumpkin/squash and corn and peppers, or something of that nature.  In this case the author suggests ways that gardening can be made more productive through being done in coordination with raising chickens (and other birds).  This is done through growing plants that chickens are not allergic too while also taking steps to make sure that the chickens do not destroy the plants and encouraging ways for chickens to use their foraging ability to help reduce the amount of pests that bother plants growing up.  To be sure, growing both plants and chickens in close proximity is by no means an easy task, but this book does a good job at showing how the task can be managed through thinking and planning ahead and building a good infrastructure for one’s gardening and raising issues.

This particular book is between 150 and 200 pages and is divided into 7 chapters.  The author begins with an introduction and then discusses some issues in getting started (1), including planning one’s garden location, creating a chicken-safe yard, starting plants, and gardening with chickens in all seasons.  After that there is a discussion about planning and constructing a raised-bed garden (2).  Then there is a look at herbal feed supplement gardens (3) that provide nutrients for chickens and maximize egg production, orange egg yolks, or help raise healthy chicks.   Then there is a look at edible gardens and one’s chickens (4), with a discussion of soil for edibles, good and bad bugs, gardening in the spring and fall, and edibles to avoid for chickens.  There is a discussion of creative gardens for chicken keepers (5) that includes natural wormers, edible flowers, nesting boxes, and first-aid kits.  Then there is a chapter on composting that looks at chicken manure and its usefulness as well as chicken poop tea (6).  Finally, the book ends with a chapter on how someone can landscape their chicken run with perennials, annuals, and other landscaping, after which the book ends with some information about the author as well as acknowledgements, suggestions for further reading, and an index.

I have to admit that I found this book rather funny.  I have never raised chickens myself but plenty of my friends have been urban and suburban and exurban chicken raisers who have combined their gardening with plenty of fowl.  The two activities can definitely be done together, although keeping one’s chickens safe and sound while also making sure to grow foods that are good for one’s family (and one’s fowl) can be a challenge.  The author of this book clearly has as lot of experience in combining the tasks of raising chickens (and ducks, it should be noted) as well as gardening and has some worthwhile tasks on how the two can be put together for fun and profit.  Not everyone will appreciate the author’s occasionally earthy humor, but if you are going to want to raise chickens it is pretty likely that you will need to be able to handle and appreciate plenty of jokes about manure.  I was only disappointed, and even that only a little, by the way that the author failed to make jokes about the movie Chicken Run since she was making plenty of references to her homemade and quite entertaining chicken runs that she used to make sure that the chickens stayed in the right areas.