Several of you have emailed to ask about the next installment in the Permaculture Chicken series.  The trouble is that pasturing is a big topic and I got bogged down in the sheer size of the undertaking.  At the same time, Amazon changed their policies so I could only cram about 60 pictures into an ebook if I wanted to keep the price down to 99 cents.

Rather than overwhelming myself with writing a gargantuan tome all at once (and having to boost the price), I decided to break pasturing up into two or three segments.  The first installment, as the name suggests, is the basics --- why grazing chickens is different from grazing ruminants, how pasture plants grow in rotational pastures, and how to keep traditional pastures lush despite chicken scratching.

Next on my writing agenda is a sum-up of our fridge root cellar experiments, but after that I should be back to work on the next Permaculture Chicken installment --- forest pastures, chicken moats, and more.  Thanks for reading!

Back before I learned to self-publish, I wrote a children's picture book about chickens for a friend's baby.  Since then, the file has been sitting on my computer gathering e-dust.

But no longer!  When I dusted off the virtual pages, I discovered the story still captured my interest, so I thought it might capture yours as well.

Rather than selling the picture book separately, I added it as a bonus at the end of The Working Chicken.  If you've bought the ebook on Amazon, you should get an email from Amazon shortly letting you know that you can download the updated version for free.  If you don't have the Amazon ebook, just email anna@kitenet.net and I'll send you a copy of Hop, Step, Peck...RUN!  Enjoy!

The Permaculture Chicken Incubation Handbook is now available for 99 cents on Amazon!

The boook walks beginners through perfecting the incubating and hatching process so they can enjoy the exhilaration of the hatch without the angst of dead chicks. 92 full color photos bring incubation to life, while charts, diagrams, and tables provide the hard data you need to accomplish a hatch rate of 85% or more.





Topics include:

• How chickens fit into a permaculture system
• Reasons to incubate your own eggs
• The mother hen option
• Choosing the best eggs, with information on seasons, parentage, egg shape, and shell quality
• Storing and marking eggs
• What to expect when buying mail order eggs
• Choosing the best incubator
• The basics of incubation: time, temperature, humidity, turning, etc.
• Pros and cons of dry incubation, including ways to calculate egg weight loss
• Candling eggs
• What to do during temperature spikes and power outages
• Preparing for the hatch, hatching, and dry off period
• When and how to help chicks out of the shell
• How to tell whether unhatched eggs are alive
• Calculating percent viable eggs, hatch rate, and survivability
• Troubleshooting incubation problems, including tips on autopsying eggs and a dichotomous key to pinpoint causes
• Diagnosing, preventing, and dealing with hatch-related ailments like wry neck, spraddle leg, and more
• Caring for sick chicks and knowing when and how to euthanize
• Basic needs of chicks after hatching: temperature, food, and water
• Housing chicks, with information on outdoor brooders
• Pasturing very young birds

Since it's chick-starting season, I shouldn't be surprised that the first facet of the Permaculture Chicken that I wanted to write about was ways to incubate and hatch homegrown chicks successfully.

I've learned a lot over the last couple of years about how to get better hatch rates (and feel less stressed during the process) and I thought I'd share my tips to help others achieve the same skill set faster than I did.

Stay tuned to this space for an announcement when the Incubation Handbook is ready to go live.  I expect a launch date of late March or early April.  Right about the same time our second set of eggs hatches....