Hi everyone – Remember Pat Foreman, who we hosted for an event in Santa Barbara several years ago?  She is starting another one of her online courses soon!

1 week before the Backyard Chicken Keeper Certification Course Begins

Course with Coaching

BEGINS JANUARY 9, 2019

We guarantee
that after taking theBackyard Chicken Keeper Certification Course, 
you will understand how to raise, keep and employ chickens 
to help feed yourself and others 
for the rest of your life!

10 Online View-at-your-convenience Classes.
Weekly Q&A sessions on Wednesdays, 7:30pm EST

View 24/7 class presentations.
Receive copies of over 560 PowerPoint slides for notes.
Individual "chick-in" sessions to help you keep up.

Individual Tuition $199 and Family Tuition $275
Senior Discounts & Scholarships available
 For information & registration call:  (540) 460-6459

Facilitated by popular
speaker and author
Patricia Foreman

Author of the course text books:
City Chicks and Chicken Tractor

There is a back-to-the-land, grow-your-own-food movement happening in backyards and on small parcels of land. By employing chickens’ skill sets, and permaculture design in kitchen and production gardens you can grow and produce much of your own eggs, meat, vegetables, fruits and even nuts. This saves on grocery bills, and you are assured your food is wholesome and grown in living, clean soils. With small-scale, labor-saving methods, you will learn how to minimize work and maximize production in your spare time. Developing your own chicken have-more plan is the most practical way to stretch income and keep yourself, and your family, in good health with healthy foods. It is an act of green living!

Participants earn the coveted

Backyard Chicken Keeper Certification
With a certificate suitable for framing!

Class Topics

1. Chickens as the Enablers of Local Foods.
2. Flock Management & Coops From the Chickens' Point-of-view.

3. Brooding & Educating Baby Chicks.

4. Chicken Whispering: Discover the Chicken You Never Knew!

5. Eggs-trodinary Eggs: The Tips, Secrets, Science & Politics of Eggs. 
6. Primary Poultry Health Care & The Poultry's Pharmacy. 

7. Intro. to Gardening With and for Your Chickens

8. Composting & Biomass Recycling with Chicken Helpers

9. Way of the Hen: Incubating Eggs & Raising Chicks Naturally

10. Final Q&A and Certification

Gain skills that will serve a lifetime! REGISTER NOW!

Here's What a few Chickeneer Graduates Say About
The Backyard Chicken Keeper Certification Course

"This course was more than I expected. I hoped to learn a lot about chickens and instead I learned about sustainability in so many different forms that are interdependent in our world. I now have a window to deeply understand and appreciate soil, food production, heritage chickens and how I can contribute to reversing the effects of choosing profit over quality in our world. In other words I learned way more than I expected to and I am deeply grateful for this." — Anahata Iradah, Georgia

"I have had chickens forever, over 8,000 birds. This course was very helpful. Pat is a wealth of information and with each class I always learned something new to help my flock. She is so knowledable and experienced and does such a wonderful job getting information to us. I especially learned from her class is how to keep my flock healthy and happy. I'm a much better chicken keeper. Thank you and don't stop!" — Sandii Peiffer, Pennsylvania

"The BYCK Certification course 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 much 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 they 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

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

"I didn’t realize how in depth the Backyard Chicken Keeper Certification would be.  Amazing as that is…it was lots for us to digest!  In fact, I feel like we could take this course, 10 times over and still keep learning!"  — Tamie Posnick, Santa Barbara, California

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

"I’ve enjoyed and benefited from the class tremendously.  Thanks for all you’ve done! Don't stop!"—Don Rowland, South Carolina

"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. 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 Johnston, North Carolina

Individual 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 and the food, using and preserving heirloom seeds, is high in vitamins and minerals. 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 Occupy Backyards, and at the same time, stretch income and keep yourself, and your family, in good health. 

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. Beginning with adult birds this workshop covers the main considerations of coop, run design and chicken furniture from the bird's view. We will explore which chicken breeds tend to do best in various climates, runs and coop structures. 

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. All questions will be answered. 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 even 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 workshop.

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. Learn how chickens forage—and which food 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 trash into black gold. Begin birdscaping, which is planting trees, shrubs. perennials and annuals that your flock will perpetually love. 

And 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. Biomass Recycling, Composting, Top Soil Creation with Chicken Helpers
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 almost 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 our literature searches there is very little 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. Course facilitator Patricia Foreman. Textbook: City Chicks.

10. Course Review, Q&A. This final class is a review of the entire course to highlight the understanding of key concepts. The exam is used as a learning tool. No one fails the exam except by not turning it in after the final review. 

Facilitated by Pat Foreman, BSc. Animal Science (genetics and nutrition), Pharmacist, Masters Public Affairs

President, The Gossamer Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to Global Sustainability and Local Foods. 
“We can’t have one without the other.”

Author of:
• City Chicks: Employing Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Creators,
     Biomass Recyclers and Local Food Enablers
• A Tiny Home to Call Your Own: Living Well in Just Right Houses
Co-author of:
• Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil,
• Day Range Poultry: Every Chicken Owners Guide to Grazing Gardens and Improving Pastures

• Backyard Market Gardening: The Entrepreneur;s guide to Selling What You Grow

Class size limited. Begins January 9th, 2019. PLEASE REGISTER SOON!

Join our affiliate program to earn Cluck Bucks

and help others understand how to grow their own food

to create sustainable households, communities and help our planet.

Copyright © 2019 The Gossamer Foundation, All rights reserved.
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