Keeping chickens is fun, relaxing, and low maintenance, plus you have the added benefit of your own known source of fresh eggs. In Chickens, poultry breeders Graham Page and Suzie Baldwin offer a practical guide to everything the beginner needs to know, from whether to buy chicks or hens, what varieties to chose, how to tell if you're buying a healthy chicken and how to ensure it stays that way, to how many chickens you should keep, and what kind of coop to buy. They also answer all the questions commonly posed by first-time owners, from whether chickens ever fly away and how quickly they will start laying, to how to prevent them being attacked by foxes and what to do when they become unwell.