Day Range Poultry

Day range poultryI had high hopes for Day Range
Poultry
by Andy
Lee and Patricia Foreman, so perhaps that’s why I was
disappointed.  Here’s what you should expect:

  • An honest account of why the authors no longer believe that
    chicken tractors are for everyone.  (See my analysis of chicken
    tractors vs. day range
    for more information.)
  • An explanation of their specific day range model, used to pasture
    thousands of chickens and turkeys.  Basically, this is the same as
    Joel Salatin’s egg-mobile — a moveable but semi-permanent coop
    surrounded by pasture.  Poultry are let out into areas marked off
    by portable electric fence and are moved at intervals.
  • A good explanation of incubation and hatching (my favorite
    chapter of the book.)
  • Easy to read with lots of illustrations.

Unfortunately, you need
to expect these negative qualities as well:

  • A shallow feel, without data that would allow you to take their
    experiences and tweak their model to apply to different settings.
  • Spelling errors, repetition, and jumpiness, with the contents of
    many chapters not matching the title.  (A good editor could have
    worked wonders with this book.)
  • Large font, so the book holds much less information than you’d
    guess from the page count.

I hate to say it, but
this book offers little of interest to the backyard
enthusiast.  
Day Range
Poultry
is an
explanation of how to make a part time living by raising chickens in a
manner better than the industrial model — if that’s what you’re
interested in, this book should be on your shelf.  However, if
you’re just trying to figure out the best way to raise chickens on
pasture on a small scale, their model of 1,000 Cornish Cross broilers
per acre with a feed
conversion rate
of 4:1 won’t give you any ideas.



Our chicken waterer makes it easy to provide
your flock with POOP-free water.

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