Beginners Guide - Keeping Laying Hens/Chickens/Poultry

We are a small family who raise rare and traditional animals on our smallholding in South Lincolnshire including pigs, cows, chickens, ducks, geese and sheep.

Emma and I started with chickens when we were still living in a town, we had six Orpington hens that were more pet than anything else, it was a fantastic hobby and unbeknown to us the start of our lifestyle change from townie to smallholder, we still keep Orpington hens now and interestingly enough we still have one of the original six hens still roaming around with us, we also have a great many other chickens now from rescue battery hens to adopted bantams (small hens) which are great for raising chicks. If you are interested we run a small blog style website where you can see our progress over the years www.durston.org.uk  

Emma and I have already produced a "beginners guide to keeping pigs" which you guys seem to like very much, so we thought that a "beginners" guide for raising hens for eggs might be of benefit to anyone who is interested in taking up one of Britons fastest growing hobbies.

Our beginners guide booklet covers:

Introduction
General Introduction
Types of hen
Housing
Bedding
Fencing
Water
Feed
General Health

The booklet also includes DEFRA guidance and advice on poultry, this section of the booklet contains all information needed for the successful raising of your hens and covers:

Health and Welfare
On-Farm Welfare
Laying hens
Other poultry
A-Z disease index
Useful links

And web addresses to all associated DEFRA documentation that may be required, depending upon your situation.

The booklet is A5 in size (half A4) and contains 16 pages, and we believe it's a good guide to starting with hens written by us through our own experience.

To keep the cost of this booklet as low as possible and by definition value for money (something close to our own hearts) we have decided to send these booklets electronically (via email)...This saves money and time on postage and you get your booklet quicker.

Once we have a payment (via PayPal) we will send this booklet to the PayPal email address, the booklet will be an Adobe (.PDF) file which can be read by anyone with a PC.

IMPORTANT:- BEFORE YOU ORDER.

Please ensure that you are able to receive e-mails to your e-mail account, and that you are having no e-mail difficulties.

Also ensure that you are able to read an Adobe (.PDF) document, if unsure go to http://www.adobe.com/uk

Please note…Each of the booklets sold via email will have a “Not for Re-Sale” watermark on each page, we do want to share our knowledge but we do not want to give it away…we don’t love you that much!  And the money generated by the sale of the booklets goes towards our animal feed bill…so every penny counts.

Any questions please email me...thank you for looking at our sale.