The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers--With information on building soil fertility, replacing purchased feed, and working with poultry in the garden [Paperback]

I got a chance to hear Harvey speak at the Mother Earth News Fair in Pennsylvania. I also got to take a look a the last copy of his book, because the Fair sold out! While I couldn't buy this last copy, I did get to spend considerable time looking through it, with my super critical eye- having raised chickens for the past 45 plus years. Even with my experience in raising and butchering, I could still learn some things from this book.

I love Harvey's passion for utilizing the natural instincts and qualities of poultry to increase the quality of the entire small farm- through insect and pest management, cultivation of soil, and use of poultry manure. Also his kindness, humility, and vast knowledge are evident throughout the book- what a role model his is!

This book is the perfect example of a much covered topic (chickens) that has been done in such a fashion as to bring new and better information to what had seemed like a thoroughly covered field.

The only thing I wish he had covered in the butchering section (but perhaps I missed it in my hurry to look through the entire volume)was how to skin instead of pluck. For those who don't eat the skin, but can compost the feathers and skin as one, this method is speedy and clean- a nice option to know about.

I hear he is working on another book, can't wait to see it as well!

If you are looking for a book on poultry READ THIS BOOK FIRST. It has made me completely rethink how we are going to manage our small flocks. This book is the real deal. You know it's got to be good when Joel Salatin writes your intro. These are the men I respect when it comes to natural, sustainable agriculture and livestock husbandry. I'm thrilled they are teaching the new wave of farmers that are adopting their practices. This is the exact information we need to start the long road of ending, or at least reducing, the factory farm conglomerates that are detrimental to our health (as well as the animals), and our food supply chain. Long live small, independent, natural farming the way it was intended to be!

I have read many books on backyard flocks but nothing compares to Harvey's book. I love Harvey's stories in Backyard poultry, Mother Earth News and Countryside magazines and was always hoping he would write a book. I have been anxiously awaiting for this to be published. I preordered immediately when it became available and waited paitently. It has by far passed all my expectations. The book chock full of pictures is simply amazing in it's depth and scope of knowledge for the small homesteader/farmsteader. From general poultry health, natural feed, promoting small farm sustainability and production, to using your chicks as a farming partner as composters and tillers, Harvey covers it all in depth and humour. Old wisdom with today's advancements thrown in makes the THE book to have in your livestock library.

I cannot state enough how good this book really is. Flock management used to be commonplace when we grew most of our food, but has been a dying art. Thanks to guys like Harvey and Joel a new wave of flock owners will have that knowledge passed on to them.

I received it three days ago and it has become one of my favorites. Who would have thought I would be so excited over a book about poultry? I have been looking for a book like this for years. It will be revisited many times as we gear up for next Spring's hatching and gardening adventures. Follow our adventures online at Drowning Creek Homestead. Just google it..

Now, just click that button and add it to your cart. I guarantee you will be extremely happy you did!

The Short Story:
In a nutshell, I was looking for a book that covered feeding my poultry flock with homegrown feed year-round, pasturing my flock without worry of predation (my property adjoins nearly 3 million acres of contiguous national forest land and this is a BIG concern for me), caring for my flock without the use of antibiotics and pesticides yet also without the hardcore Darwinian approach espoused by The Accidental Farmers, and integrating my poultry with my other homestead practices of gardening and rearing livestock. Frankly, I feel that this book delivered in every one of these categories...and then some. I had considered Joel Salatin's book Pastured Poultry Profits but chose to go with this book instead because it has a lot of the information I would've gotten from that book without the opinions/general preachiness/gripes that the man is notable for. It's not that I don't appreciate hearing and learning from others and stretching my mind with their points of view, it was simply that I was looking for a book about the poultry, the whole poultry, and nothing but the poultry, so help me God.

The Protracted Story:
Let me preface this review by saying that this is not the first poultry-keeping book I've bought, or check-out of the library or borrowed from a friend or pinched from the bookstore while the attendant's back was turned -- okay, just kidding on that last one, but you get the idea. Most notably among that list being Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens: 3rd Edition and The Encyclopedia of Country Living as well as numerous articles from the Mother Earth News and Backyard Poultry magazines. While both of the aforementioned books had their merits, they also had drawbacks. For me, the Storey publication focused too much on commercialized or large-scale procedures such as commercial feed, antibiotics, pesticides, and some extremely high maintenance and generally unnecessary procedures (such as scrubbing out the coop with disinfectant as often as once a week!). It also seemed (to me) to be unfairly dismissive of electric net fencing for poultry, stating, "An all-electric net fence designed specifically for poultry sounds great in principle but in practice is not ideal. It must be constantly electrified so poultry, pets, and predators don't get tangled in the net; if you live in an area prone to power outages, you must use a battery- or solar-operated energizer and make certain it's always fully functional." Coming from writers who expected me to scrub my coop floor to ceiling once a week, it seemed a little ridiculous to dismiss an electric net fence because it had to be plugged in to an outlet or charged battery and mown along the perimeter periodically. It goes on to state that your poultry can get caught in the wires and electrocute themselves, which was true of older models but is extremely unlikely in current models and not (to me) a reason to deter me from using them. As far as the Encyclopedia of Country Living is concerned, it is a great book and very comprehensive in a lot of areas; however, it really fell short for me in the area of pasturing your flock. In a book just under 1,000 pages, it makes mention of pasturing the flock in only one section covering one quarter of one page. It does not cover mobile shelters, except to say that they exist, and makes no mention whatsoever of electric net fencing (which seems to be the most common method of pasturing poultry today, in my experience). In defense of the author, this information is probably omitted simply because it was written long before this sort of thing became either possible or practical and the author has since passed away. However, understanding this does not change the fact that I wanted more information on pasturing than this book provided.

Having read these books and been somewhat disappointed, I was pretty dubious about buying yet another book about poultry and considered waiting until it became available at the library. However, I'd first run across Harvey Ussery in an article he wrote about cover cropping and was impressed both by his depth of knowledge and his ability to use the many facets of farm life in effective and synergistic balance (for examples: using cover crops not only for the traditional use of protecting and replenishing the topsoil, but also as forage for his poultry/livestock, protection for (s)lower growing crops like alfalfa, and as natural weed exterminators; or using poultry not only for the traditional uses of eggs and meat, but also as small-scale tillers/tractors, weed/pest control, and fertilizers). These impressions drew me to the book and I chose to preview it on google books to see if it really offered everything I was looking for. Once again, I was impressed. There is an extensive portion of the book available for preview on that site and it is chock full of comprehensive and practical information regarding every facet of poultry life, from birth all the way to the egg-bearing/child-rearing phase and on into death and the afterlife (in the stockpot). Of particular note, Mr. Ussery is particularly good at providing endnotes that factually shore-up the practices he is espousing. This may not be essential in a lot of cases, but I appreciate knowing that his information is based on scientific studies and I find that it is generally beneficial to balance the wisdom of the ages with the information of the present. I feel that he does both.

An Addendum:
I made mention in the beginning of this review to Pastured Poultry Profits. In fairness to Joel Salatin, I can neither recommend nor discourage customers from reading/purchasing his book as I have not read it myself. I merely made my choice based both on the reviews of other customers and also on the references contained within Mr. Ussery's book to Joel Salatin. It appears that Mr. Ussery was greatly influenced by Salatin and I felt that I would be, in a sense, getting the best of both worlds in purchasing The Small-Scale Poultry Flock rather than Pastured Poultry Profits. I will most likely check out Mr. Salatin's book if I ever get the chance and do not in any way mean to write it off any one's list by this review.

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