Backyard Chicken Keeper Course & Certification

Approved for Home School, Class Room and Poultry Clubs

This is the flagship course that lays the foundation for not only keeping and employing chickens, but understanding how, and why chickens are the enablers of healthy local food supply, the creators of compost and top soil, the keystones to emergency prepareness and climate change activists.

Class topics are:
1. Chicken Have More Plan
2. Flock Management & Coops From the Chickens' Point-of-view
3. Brooding and Educating Baby Chicks
4. Chicken Whispering: Discover the Chicken You Never Knew!
5. Eggs-traordinary Eggs: The Science, Tips, Secrets & Politics of Eggs
6. Primary Poultry Health Care & The Poultry's Pharmacy
7. Garden Chicks: Introduction to Growing Food with and for Family Flocks
8. Biomass Recycling, Composting and Top Soil Creation with Chicken Helpers
9. Way of the Hen: Incubating Eggs and Brooding Chicks Naturally
10. Course Review, Q&A,

"We guarantee that after completing the Backyard Chicken Keeper Course
you will understand how to raise, keep and employ chickens
to help feed yourself and your family for the rest of your life!"

After completing all the classes (either live or replay), and passing an exam, participants are awarded the Backyard Chicken Keeper Certification (with a certificate suitable for framing). Advanced courses and projects lead to the coveted Master Backyard Chicken Keeper Certification.

Text books: City Chicks: Keeping Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Creators, Bio-recyclers and Local Food Suppliers, by Patricia Foreman.
Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Health Soils, by Andy Lee and Patricia Foreman

Class Descriptions:
1. The Chicken Have-More Plan
There is a back to the land movement and it’s happing in backyards and on small parcels of land across the planet. By employing chickens’ skill sets, and permaculture design principles in kitchen and production gardens you can grow and produce much of your own vegetables, eggs and meat. This not only saves on grocery bills, but you are assured that your food is grown in living, clean soils. You will understant why gardening with heirloom plants provides food that is high in vitamins, minerals and other nutritional factors. With small-scale, labor-saving methods, you will learn how to minimize work and maximize production in your spare time, and have fun doing it. Developing your own chicken have-more plan is the most practical way to stretch income and keep yourself, your family and your flock, in good health. Suggested Reading: City Chicks, Chicken Tractor, Empty Harvest: Understanding the Link Between Our Food, Our Immunity, and Our Planet, by Dr. Benard Jensen and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.

2. Flock Management and Coops From the Chicken's Point of View
This is a comprehensive class for those who want to keep small family flocks of primarily hens. Working with your adult birds this workshop covers the main considerations of coop, run design and chicken furniture. We will explore which chicken breeds tend to do best in various types of housing and climates

3. Brooding and Educating Baby Chicks
Nothing is cuter than a baby chick. Watching their rapid development from—peep to pullet—is a miracle. During the brooding time, you have the role of keeper and guardian angel. This intensive, interactive, hands-on course covers chick anatomy & physiology, behavior, health, nutrition, housing, breed selection, and more. By the end of the course you will know everything you need to know about successfully—and expertly—raise your very own baby chicks from day one to point-of-lay.

4. Chicken Whispering: Discover the Chicken You Never Knew
There are ways to handle and communicate with chickens that can result in trust, gentleness and even an emotional bond. But first you must learn how a chicken thinks, and prefers to be treated. It’s sometimes not what you think. Some birds can be trained to serve as therapy chickens and class room assistants. Get close and personal with your biddy buddy. Learn the basics of chicken whispering in this cutting-edge, hands-on, nose-to-beak workshop. Textbook: City Chicks.

5. Eggs-traordinary Eggs: The Science, Tips, Politics & Secrets of Eggs
Eggs are among the most nutritious, easily digestible and absorbed foods available on the planet. Eggs are so adaptable that they can be used for a variety of dishes. They create elegant soufflés, hold meat loaf together, keep oil and vinegar from separating in mayonnaise, and form crystals in candies. They spin magically into meringues and thicken smooth custards. Eggs build cake batters by providing the structural framework, and produce finely grained ice creams, enrich soups, glaze pie crusts. What other food can do all this? It’s said you can tell a great chef from a cook by the way they treat and use eggs. Learn the chemistry behind the magic of eggs in this egg-splicit, egg-citing class.

6. Primary Poultry Health Care & The Poultry's Pharmacy
Learn the essential of preventative disease management that utilizes proactive care to keep your flock healthy. You will learn about considerations for housing, air quality, feed, water and special challenges that you might face with your flock. You will learn how to treat the most common diseases as well as wounds and trauma. Includes hands-on administration of treatments and wound care. Learn how to use or make simple, but effective treatments without prescription drugs. This workshop teaches you what you need to know to avoid most veterinary bills.

7. Garden Chicks: Introduction to Growing Food With and for Family Flocks
This cutting-edge, ever-expanding, interactive workshop gives you practical, and effective ways to employ chickens in your garden or homestead. Learn how chickens create and enrich topsoil. Understand how chickens forage—and which foods they prefer. Use your yard as a mini-pasture (including rotational grazing systems) to build soil fertility, provide fresh graze. Control insects, including ticks and fleas. Integrate different types of fencing by understanding what works, and what doesn't. Jump start your gardens with chicken-assisted biomass recycling that transforms yard and kitchen "trash" into black gold. Begin birdscaping, which is planting trees, shrubs. perennials and annuals that your flock will perpetually love.

Not all chicken feed has to come from bags. There are many crops you can grow in your yard to feed your flock. Learn how chickens forage and what plants they prefer. Use your yard as a mini-pasture, including rotational grazing to build soil fertility and provide fresh graze. This ever-expanding course goes into detail a crop’s life-cycle to understand when, and how, chickens can be incorporated for insect control, fertilizing, soil management and harvesting. Best of all, we will talk about getting truly wholesome, nutritious, non-GMO homegrown food for both you and your flock. This is truly a “Think Outside the Coop and Inside Local Food Systems“ workshop.

8. Employ Climate Change Activist Chickens for Biomass Recycling, Composting and Top Soil Creation
The chickens in your family flock have skill sets that can be used to create compost, fertilize and build tilth in top soil. And simultaneously, they help decrease the amount of “trash” that is collected by the solid waste management system. Learn how your feathered bipeds can serve as clucking civic workers to help save BIG TIME tax payer dollars and as Partners Toward Zero Waste for communities and counties.

9. Way of the Hen: Incubating and Raising Naturally
Using, managing and understanding broody hens is a lost art. And yet, broody hens happen. With the surge of family flocks, many poultry owners are wondering what to do with their broody moody biddies. From literature searches there is hardly any practical information about employing hens to incubate eggs, and brood chicks naturally. In many ways, this is a key not only to family flock self-sufficiency, but also to preserving the heritage breeds. Textbook: City Chicks.

10. Course Review, Q&A, Preparation for Final Exam for the Backyard Chicken Keeper Certification (with a diploma suitable for framing).
This final class is a review of the course using an exam to highlight key concepts. The final review is used as a learning tool. No one fails the exam except by not turning it in after the final review.

Facilitated by Patricia Foreman, Bsc, Animal Science, Pharmacist, MPA

Here's what graduate Chickeneers are saying
about the Backyard Chicken Keeper Certification Course

"Got chickens? Want chickens? Want to do right by them? Then The Backyard Chicken Keeper Course is for you! Practical information that cannot be found anywhere else. Don’t settle for a chicken coop and run with nothing but mud. This course will teach you how to care for your soil in order to better care for your chickens AND how to have your chickens build the soil to better care for YOU! The class on brooding was the most useful information I have ever received on the subject, with many tips and tricks that you won’t get in any of the how-to books except City Chicks. This online course is interactive and super friendly, I have made many friends during the course and I am so excited to stay in touch. It is great to meet other people who share the same goal of sustainable, happy, healthy lives for their chicken flock. I hope to continue taking online classes or workshops in this format, Pat Foreman is a great teacher with an infectious attitude, and I can’t wait to learn even more!"" — Karen Johnson, North Carolina

"I have had chickens forever, over 8,000 but still this class was incredibly helpful. It has a wealth of information and I always learn something new to help my flock. I especially learned how to keep my flock healthy and happy. Thank you so much for sharing so much chicken knowledge. It was also great to get to know other Chickeneers (or soon-to-be!) and share our different experiences." — Sandii Peiffer, Pennsylvania

"Pat is an amazing person and instructor! The course was well worth the time and money." —Julie Chasse, Berryville, MD

"I’ve enjoyed and benefited from the class tremendously. Thanks for all you’ve done!" —Don Rowland, South Carolina

"Great course! This class is good for the newbie to the experienced poultry owner and you've done a great job of putting it all together. Thank you for taking the time to teach. " Dr. Laurel Eakin—Indiana

"The Backyard Chicken Keeper training was an awesome experience. It was very informative and practical. I have learned a great deal about chickens, and also about the delicate balance in our current food production system, including the dangers with modern agriculture, and the benefits of organic and sustainable agriculture. I am certainly more aware of buying locally produced food from living soils and humanely raised meats. This class just made sense in general to me. I am a psychologist and treat mental health patients every day, and if folks would embrace the concepts from this class, I think that many folks would be much better off. There is much to be said of quality, and this is something that is emphasized in this class, both for chickens and people." —Brad Croyle, Pennsylvania