Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens

Why it's worth it

Gail Damerow's Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens covers breeds, coop design, health problems, and egg production in one thick, plainly written volume. It's the book new keepers reach for at 10 p.m. when a hen looks wrong and they need an answer.

This is the gift you buy when you don't know their setup. It fits any coop, any flock size, any climate, and it never needs batteries or an outlet. If your recipient got chickens in the last year, they have questions they haven't thought to ask yet — about molting, about mites, about why the laying stopped — and this answers essentially all of them.

Its credentials are unusually solid for a hobby book. It has sold more than 500,000 copies across four editions and appears on the recommended-reading pages of more than 14 U.S. land-grant university extension programs. That's the sort of endorsement that doesn't come from marketing. Readers repeatedly describe it as the most complete of the several chicken books they bought.

From our review of 8 gifts for backyard chicken keepers

What we like

• +This is the gift you buy when you don't know their setup
• +Its credentials are unusually solid for a hobby book
• +Damerow writes for people starting from zero, which is exactly the register a first-year keeper needs
• +It's also the easy add-on

What to know

• –This particular listing is a used copy in good condition, so don't expect pristine gift-table presentation
• –It's a reference book, not a fun read