The Chicken Encyclopedia: Your A-Z Guide for Facts about Chickens

The Perfect Illustrated Resource for Anyone Raising Backyard Chickens

The Chicken Encyclopedia: Your A-Z Guide for Facts about Chickens

Celebrated poultry author Gail Damerow is giving the poultry world something to cheer about with her new (and indispensable) encyclopedic resource book: The Chicken Encyclopedia.

Beginners and old pros alike are sure to love this book, with its listing of more than 1,000 facts about chickens, all beautifully illustrated with full-color photos.

From Ameraucanas to Wind Egg, Crossed Beak to Zygote, the terminology of everything chicken is demystified in The Chicken Encyclopedia. All the facts about chickens that matter are either included here or probably not worth knowing. Not only a reference work, it’s interesting enough to read on its own for a complete education in chickenology. The colorful pages include numerous facts about chickens including:

• Details about the best backyard chicken breeds, including heritage chicken breeds

• Common conditions and diseases that could affect your flock, including Avian Influenza symptoms

• Behaviors and mannerisms of your chickens

• Anatomy of a chicken

• Breed associations and poultry programs

• Housing, feed, and general care concerns

• And interesting egg facts like this entry about avidin: Avidin \ A protein in raw eggs. Among various proteins, avidin is significant because it ties up the vitamin biotin as part of an egg’s defenses against bacteria since most bacteria can’t grow without biotin. Dogs and cats are sensitive to the effects of avidin and therefore should not be fed raw eggs routinely. A human, however, would have to eat two dozen raw eggs a day to be affected. Cooking eggs inactivates avidin.

Whether it’s the difference between wry tail, split tail, and gamy tail; the meaning of hen feathered, forced molt, or quill feather; the characteristics of droopy wing; the content of granite grit; or the translation of a chicken’s alarm call, there are answers to every chicken question and quandary, from the practical to the curious, in Damerow’s The Chicken Encyclopedia.

A regular contributor to Backyard Poultry and Countryside Small Stock & Journal, Gail Damerow has authored several books about homesteading, livestock, and poultry including The Chicken Health Handbook, Hatching & Brooding Your Own Chicks, Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens, and Fences for Pasture and Garden — all available in the Countryside bookstore!

Gail lives in Tennessee where she and her husband, Allan, keep poultry and dairy goats, tend a sizable garden, and maintain a small orchard and a large woodlot. On their diversified small farm, they seek independence and sustainability by growing and preserving much of what they eat and feed their livestock.


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