Raising Backyard Chickens Seminar Offered Wednesday

Backyard chickens have become popular enough that most of us are acquainted with at least one ‘hen-thusiast.’ There are more newbies out there every day, but people who have been keeping chickens for a number of years often start to encounter questions that their peers don’t know how to answer, or start to wonder about generating some income with their birds.

“Chickens are gateway livestock,” says Andy Larson, Local Food Systems and Small Farms Educator for University of Illinois Extension (and also a small-scale chicken farmer). “That is, chickens are many peoples’ first foray into animal husbandry, but after a while, they want to get more birds, they want to get better at keeping birds, and they start to wonder whether or not they could start a business, or at least cover the feed bill.”

Join Andy Larson for Advanced Backyard Chickens, a seminar for experienced chicken-keepers on growing a bigger, better chicken enterprise. The topics covered will include:

Housing options for larger flocks
Flock health and biosecurity
Selling eggs with an Illinois Egg License
Selling pasture-raised poultry meat
Advanced Backyard Chickens will take place:

The Advanced Backyard Chickens seminar will be this Wednesday, August 3rd from 5:30-7:30pm at the DeKalb County Extension office
(1350 W. Prairie Drive in Sycamore, 815-758-8194). The registration fee is $10 and registration can be completed online at http://web.extension.illinois.edu/bdo/. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in this program, please contact your local Extension office.