Hi Sue, Just want to add that there are a lot of books on poultry and chickens in general out there that are so generic that just about anyone could have written them.
When I first got on the internet there were a lot of top chicken breeders, true poultry exhibitors, and a few true experts in various fields also on the poultry chat sites. Over the short span of time from 2002 to about 2006 many of the true experts had thrown in the towel so to speak and left the internet because they were tired of arguing. It is sad when a person with a PHd in poultry genetics and a prominent figure in the chicken genome project is trying to share some of their knowledge and gets talked down to by a person with a few years of college and a rudimentary knowledge of these subjects.
The person in question has written many articles for scientific publications and was the one who discovered and purified the Smoky gene in chickens.
Then I have first hand knowledge of several of the authors of some of the poultry books out there that really are not qualified to write much of anything on these many subjects. One person has written one book on chickens and is starting a second and each time they start to write a book they cut their poultry flock down from a few dozen chickens to around 10 laying hens so it doesn't affect their mental flow with those pesky chores.
The sad part about these people whom so many want to paint as experts is that they have a limited knowledge of their subject and they never raised more than a few dozen chickens in their entire life at any one given time. They buy a breed, raise it for a couple of years and suddenly this makes them an expert?! They have never stuck with any breed long enough to really know the ins and outs of that particular breed and it's major quirks. They have possibly shown a few chickens when they were young and then moved on because they believed in their mind that they had mastered that art and there is nothing left to learn.
The one thing these people have in common is that they have a good grasp of the language and sentence structure which gets them by the worst of the scrutiny. And as the old saying goes "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance then baffle them with B.S.."
There is a poultry genetics book out there for sale that was written by a man with a high school education, a few short years of doing a poor job of raising chickens, and was self taught in genetics. He has left the internet chat because he has totally mastered the art of raising and breeding fowl and has moved on to more challenging subjects. He believes this because he said it in print just before he left the internet and the MSN site where he posted this message crashed when MSN closed down their free sites. He was laughable and so many believed he was a genius. It is easy to regurgitate genetic script but not so easy to revive a group of hypothermic chicks. The mechanics of the later, basic husbandry, was something he avoided discussing.
The average author who writes a poultry book has around 4 years of raising chickens under their belt and about half of what they write came from other books on the subject and were reworded so that they wouldn't get their behind caught in the legal wringer.
I have read the book written by Gail Damerow and find it to be pretty solid information, a little generic, but sound advice for the beginner. What sets it a bit above the rest is the line drawings that go a long way toward getting her message across.
Actually Sue I would go a step further and recommend that anyone wanting to raise any type of livestock, poultry, cage birds, etc. first go to visit with a top breeder. And the best places to start is by attending a poultry [or whatever species]show and doing a little studying while you are there as an observer. Locate one of the top breeders by asking around and then go to where the most fingers were pointed. The best are usually those who are too modest and quiet to admit it. They are the ones that go about life trying not to stir things too much, go to the shows, bring home a pile of trophies,and
put them on a shelf with little fan fare.
They should be the ones writing the books but very few of these people will ever do more than write a few short posts on the internet or volunteer to help behind the scenes. They have no desire for fame or to be leaders. They are in it for the enjoyment of the hobby. Dean
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"wildliferescue29" <wildliferescue29@...> wrote:
Not to sound disagreeable but with some of the inquiries on this site, I wonder if anyone bothers to read books on poultry keeping.
I know that I, as well as others, have suggested books on poultry and I'm a bit stumped at why more folks don't have manuals to learn about poultry husbandry.
Online discussions can be useful and have their place however, more often than not, what you're going to get is a great big bowl of conflicting information and end up more confused than you were to start out with. At least if you know the basics, you can pick and choose what you read online as useful information.
Before acquiring livestock of any kind, it would seem prudent to have a manual on the basics of husbandry before embarking.
Just sayin'.
Sue
WLR
CHICKENS-101@yahoogroups.com
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