City Chicks!

Got Chickens? A desire for sustainable, clean, wholesome food, and superior soil quality, has led more and more suburban and city dwellers to keep laying hens in their backyards and gardens. Across America municipalities are allowing, and even encouraging, residents to keep laying hens within city limits.

Please join Patricia Foreman, author of City Chicks~Keeping Micro-flocks of Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-recyclers and Local Food Suppliers, as she shares her humor, passion, and extensive knowledge about raising chickens in the cities and suburbs of America. There are many books on how to keep chickens, but City Chicks is the only one that tells you how to employ them. Learn how to employ a flock's skill set for insect and rodent control, weed abatement, fertilizer & compost creation, and as biomass-recyclers. All this, and enjoy fresh, healthy eggs, that only travel a few feet from your kitchen!

As we search for more integrated solutions for urban problems, we discover chickens may be the answer. City Chicks explores the civic side of chickens as they help turn waste destined for landfills into food, fertilizer and compost. A few hundred households keeping micro-flocks of laying hens can divert tons of yard and food waste from trash collection, saving municipalities thousands, even millions of tax dollars. While Americans struggle with income loss and question unsustainable agriculture methods of commercial food production, home hen-keeping can feed families, while helping to eliminate our reliance on chemicals for farming, reducing oil-dependency and our carbon footprint. City Chicks goes on to explain why hens are not just utilitarian but fun and companionable, and can help build family and neighborhood bonds with grow-your-own food and bounty-sharing practices. Locally produced nutritious food helps keep America strong and safe.

Patricia Foreman graduated from Purdue University with degrees in Pharmacy and Agriculture. At Indiana University's Graduate School of Public and Environmental Affairs she earned a Master of Public Affairs degree, with majors in Health Systems Administration and International Affairs. She completed the Virginia Master Gardener's program in 1999 and a Permaculture Design Course with Bill Mollison 1991.

Pat has kept poultry for over 20 years. Her experience includes operating a small-scale farm raising free range, organic layers, broilers and turkeys. She keeps a backyard flock of heritage chickens. Pat is also the co-author of "Chicken Tractor, Day Range Poultry, Backyard Market Gardening, and A Tiny Home to Call Your Own".