Chickens are hot! There's a chicken-farming boomlet on the rise, with upscale urban and suburban homeowners from every part of the country ordering fancy breeds of chickens, hiring architects to build elegant chicken coops in their backyards, and signing up for classes on how to raise a happy, healthy flock in a small space.

Now Barbara Kilarski, a woman with a passion for poultry, offers a handbook that is as practical and encouraging as it is witty and entertaining. THE TOWN & COUNTRY CHICKEN provides the detailed information every aspiring chicken keeper needs to know.

Like home-grown vegetables, home-raised chickens put us in touch with our rural past, give us a sense of self-sufficiency, and provide food - eggs! - for the table that is a lot tastier than anything we could find at the supermarket. And chickens are fun! Like dogs, they bond with their owners, and like kids, they do the darnedest things.

Kilarski regales the reader with tales spotlighting the joys of raising chickens, while at the same time explaining the nitty-gritty details of how to be a successful chicken keeper. Any way you look at it, chickens are a star of the domestic household. They are easy and inexpensive to raise, they don't need much living space, and they provide eggs for free. No dog or cat on the planet can make the same claim.