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backyard poultry raising

July 11, 2008 – 6:12 pm by caleb

The first thing I did when I decided to raise chickens was put a hold on every book in the library with chicken or poultry in the subject heading. By far, the most informative and entertaining one I read is John Festus Adams’ Backyard poultry raising: the chicken-growing, egg-laying, feather-plucking, incubating, caponizing, finger-licking handbook, published in 1977.

Judging a book by its cover, in this case an astounding 70s design complete with an iconic chicken-as-farmer, I knew I was going to like it. I did. The book provided me everything I needed to know about raising chickens with no direct instruction at all, or none that I remember anyway. What makes this book such a rare treat are the author’s anecdotes about raising various birds - chickens, turkeys, ducks, an owl, an eagle - and the pervasive idea that anything can happen, it usually does, and it’s a blast.

Right at the start of the book, Adams warns us not to take chickens too seriously.

The reasons any particular person keeps, or wants to keep, chickens will be found to include one or more of these three options: for eggs, for meat, or for the hell of it.

When I went around talking to my neighbors of my fowl intentions, they each asked, “for eggs or for meat?”, seemingly oblivious of the third option. I plan to get both, and sure, there’s something to the back-to-the-yard movement’s desire to know where your food comes from, but Adams’ attitude provides the most enduring reason to raise chickens or do anything else: to enjoy it.

Adams was then a professor of English at Washington State University and the consummate homesteader. Besides his book on chickens, he wrote about gardening, beekeeping, and homebrewing, translated Anglo-Saxon poetry and published a novel. He’s both renaissance man and country boy, and all of his books that I’ve been able to get my hands share his easy style and irreverence for taking anything too seriously.

His book on homebrewing includes hangover cures, and discussing gardening, he’s the only writer I’ve known to include sex as one of the reasons home-grown foods are better than store-bought.

Even the lowly potato, freshly dug, suddenly has a flavor, a distinct, unique and subtle earthiness, suggestive of native mushrooms or the mysterious wild. My wife says there is something erotic in their earthiness. I always grow lots.

- The Epicurean Gardener (1988)

Adams’ point of view is grounding, and if it weren’t for that, he might have been some kind of 70s and 80s Michael Pollan, the gardening writer turned food writer now drying out as a food activist urging readers to start a garden to save the environment. Thank Dog.

It’s no wonder that Adams is able to inspire his readers to similar irreverence . My library’s 30 year-old copy is riddled with stickers and dog-ears, and scribbled in pencil at the beginning of a chapter is a simple instruction, “If you love chickens, call Ruby 503-233-9740″.

When I read this, I smiled. Ear to ear. I imagined a library service that brought together readers by hiding messages in books. I dreamed I was going down the rabbit hole of a chicken-centric alternative reality game. I looked up the number in Reference USA and found no one named Ruby. I waffled. I waited. I grew to love my chickens, and finally called the number.