Getting baby chicks for the first time? Here' s what you need to know

If you walk into your local farm/feed store during this time of year, you are likely to be greeted by the sound of peeping chicks. Beware! Do NOT go and look at the chicks (or ducks, turkeys, rabbits, or whatever cute and cuddly creatures the store might be selling) unless you are prepared to bring some home. It has been scientifically proven that it is impossible to see baby poultry in a feed store without birds coming home with you. That's what I tell Hubby Dear, anyway. (Remember how I got into raising turkeys?)

I highly recommend that folks who can raise poultry, should. It is fun and an easy way to become more self-sufficient. Before you decide to bring home those sweet, fluffy chicks, however, you need a few basic supplies and a little bit of knowledge. I will lay out those essentials in this post.

Supply list: 

1. A brooder - A brooder is simply a confined area where baby poultry can be safely raised under controlled conditions. It can be as simple as a large cardboard box, an old stock tank, or a plastic storage tote. Hatcheries also sell brooder kits like the one pictured below.

We bought our brooder kit from Randall Burkey. 

That brooder was fine for 17 chicks for about 2-1/2 weeks. After that time, I gradually increased the size  of the area they had to roam. Day old chicks can do well with 6 sq. inches of space per bird, but you will need to increase that to 1 sq. foot by the end of the first week and 2 sq. feet per bird by 2-3 weeks of age. Chickens need 4 sq. feet of coop space and 10 sq. feet of run space per bird as an adult. They grow quickly so have a coop or at least a plan for a coop in place before you commit to getting chickens. 

Note: Chicks can and will fly. Turkeys are even more prone to aerial feats. You better have a plan to keep your birds inside the brooder once they can fly (about 2 weeks of age or so for chickens). Take it from me that it is not fun to step on a pile of turkey poo because your poults decided to be adventurous.

2. Brooder light – Mama chickens keep their babies nice and toasty by snuggling them under their wings. Assuming you don't have a broody chicken kicking around your place, you will need to be the mama for your birds and give them heat. Brooder lights are very inexpensive and easy to adjust for the correct temperature. You want the area directly under the light to be 95 degrees at chick level. Decrease the heat (by moving your light up) by 5 degrees every week until the temperature inside the brooder is the same as the ambient temperatures. 

The brooder light is on one side. Some folks claim using a red light decreases incidences of picking,
but as long as the chicks have adequate room and don't get bored, that is not likely to be a problem for you. 

Place your brooder light at one end of the brooder so that your chicks can get away from the heat if they get too hot. I always make sure the food and water is in the cool zone. The best way to tell if the temperature is correct is to watch their behavior. If they remind you of a day care run amok, things are probably just fine. It is normal for them to sack out in a pile under the heat lamp every so often. All babies need plenty of sleep. 

3. Bedding - You need an absorbent, non-slippery material for your chicks to live in. I use pine shavings, which are sold in compressed bales in any feed store. They smell nice and are very absorbent. I put about 3" of shavings in the bottom of my brooder and then cover it with a layer of paper towels for the first four days or so, changing the towels daily. After the chicks have learned to eat their starter feed and not pine shavings, the paper towels are no longer necessary. Do NOT use sheets of newspaper as bedding. They can be too slick for baby chicks and can lead to leg problems. Do NOT use cedar shavings because they cause respiratory problems.

Bales of pine shavings and lidded trash cans for feed storage - two essentials for  us.

I turn the litter regularly (actually, the chicks do an excellent job of that) and add more as necessary. You might be surprised to read this but my chicken coop is very rarely stinky. It doesn't smell like much of anything, to be honest. To quote the very inspiring Joel Salatin, "if you smell manure, you are smelling mismanagement."  The key to this is the deep litter method. The deep litter method is beyond the scope of this post, but if you are interested in learning the best way to manage manure, I suggest reading Harvey Ussery's book, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.


4. Chick-sized feeders and waterers - You will want an appropriate-sized feeder and waterer for your chicks. I like to start out with the small quart-sized ones and move up to larger containers as they grow.

Midnight the Australorp getting her first drink. Note the marbles.

When you bring your chicks home, it is a good idea to gently put their beak in the water and make sure they take a sip. You can also put marbles in the rim of the waterer to make sure the chicks can't get in and drown.  

Lunch time! 

5. Chick starter - Chicks need to eat food especially formulated for their rapid growth. I buy bags of chick starter/grower, though some feed companies separate out those two categories. Each chick will eat about 10 lb of starter to reach 10 weeks of age, so buy accordingly. I try to keep a month's worth of feed on hand at all times, but no more than that lest it grow stale.

If you have ducklings, they can eat chick starter, but they need additional niacin. My ducklings get brewer's yeast added to their feed, which provides this essential nutrient. Turkey poults also appreciate the niacin and a higher protein "meat bird" starter will support their extra growth.

6. Chick-sized grit - The chicks won't need grit until they start eating foods other than chick starter. My chicks get treats of mashed hard-boiled eggs, torn dandelion greens, and other healthy goodies starting at about one week of age. At that time I give them access to a container of grit.

Three week-old chicks enjoying a snack of mashed hard-boiled egg

That's it! It's really not difficult and it is extremely rewarding. Good luck to those of you embarking on raising poultry for the first time this spring.


Resources I recommend:

1. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers by Harvey Ussery 
2. Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, 3rd Edition by Gail Damerow

Chicks! (Finally)

This chicken keeping business has been a series of misadventures and I've only had chicks in my possession for 24 hours!

You might remember that my order of chickens was scheduled to arrive between March 6-8. Despite the shipping notice I received from Meyer Hatchery on March 6th, they never shipped my birds. A couple of phone calls and an angry message or two later, they finally admitted their mistake and agreed to ship my birds the following week.

The next week came and I got a phone call early Monday morning from Meyer. They were packing my order for shipment but two of the breeds I ordered were not available (Silver Laced Wyandotte and Columbian Wyandotte). They offered me a list of breeds as substitutes - which would I prefer? None of the breeds they offered were on my list of breeds of survival chickens. I hadn't researched any of them. I probably should have just taken a refund for those chicks, but I randomly chose two interesting sounding breeds: Silver Lakenvelder and Salmon Faverolle. They sounded exotic and expensive, just like myself. Ha ha.

After I got off the phone, I was able to take a look at the catalog and learn about the breeds I had chosen. The Salmon Faverolle should be OK, but the Silver Lakenvelder isn't a breed I would have chosen if I had been given more time to think about it. Oh well.

Fast forward to yesterday morning. The post office called just after 6 AM to inform me that my chickens had arrived. I hurried into town, grabbed the very loudly peeping box, and headed back home.

When we opened the box, this is the sight that greeted us.

Chicks huddle together when they are cold

Aw, the poor little things were so cold! I gently took each chick out individually and introduced them to their new home.

Dip each chick's beak in the water as you put them in the brooder

It is really important that the chicks learn where the water is when they enter the brooder. I dipped each one's beak in the water and watched them swallow before putting them under the heat lamp. The marbles in the water dish are a bit of insurance that the wee beasties won't drown.

Home sweet home

It wasn't long before the whole crew was exploring their new home. But wait a second. Count the chicks.

There are only 16 chicks here. I ordered 17. Yep, Meyer Hatchery shorted me a chick. Needless to say, they have permanently lost my business. That's really too bad because they are one of the few hatcheries that require only three chicks as their minimum order. All but one of the chicks arrived very healthy.

Do you see the chick in the lower right corner of the above photo with the dark thing on its rear? That is the remains of its umbilical cord. It is not unusual for chicks to have a bit of the umbilical cord remaining, but this is a very large umbilical stump. A couple of hours later, this chick was lying motionless on the floor of the brooder. The other chicks piled on top off her and picked at her sore bottom. We had noticed before that she was smaller than the other chicks and her posture was a bit different than theirs. She seemed weak and fragile. By this point, we thought that she was a goner for sure. I started thinking through the elements of the funeral service that my children would surely demand. "Dearly beloved, we gather here today to lay Runt to rest...."

Hubby Dear, however, can apparently doctor chickens as well as he can humans. He separated Runt from the rest of the flock and managed to get her to eat a bit of scrambled egg (it sounds wrong, but it is a good food for chicks). He stayed up late last night working on his NCAA tournament brackets and by the time he finally came to bed, she was back up and running around again.

Several of the chicks have experienced pasty butt. When chicks are stressed or cold, their droppings can accumulate over their vent. If you don't remove the droppings, it will actually seal their vent shut and kill the chicks. A gentle wipe with a warm, wet washcloth takes care of the problem.

Now the chicks run when they see me coming because they know I'm going to pick them up and look at their butts.

The chick with the feathered legs and toes is the Salmon Faverolle. 

Their feathers are already starting to come in. They won't be babies for very long, so we're enjoying this stage while it lasts. Come August, these girls will hopefully be laying oodles of eggs. 

February in Review and March 2012 Preps

I know I think about TEOTWAWKI more than your average citizen, but hasn't the weather over the past year just been crazy? Last summer much of country experienced record heat and drought and now this?

These daffodils are at least two weeks ahead of schedule.

Our extremely mild winter has led these daffodils to believe it is mid-March. It makes me paranoid about further weather weirdness. Just what is in store for us this summer?

Darn paranoia.

What did I manage to accomplish during this strange February?

February Preps:

1) I mastered the art of making delicious homemade pizza in five minutes with common ingredients from my food storage. A little practice (and the purchase of an amazing peel that really makes the process foolproof) was all it took.

2) Did you know how expensive quality outdoor extension cords are? I didn't, but I sure do now! I bought an 100 footer to power up my chicken coop. I comforted myself with the thought that an extension cord is a very good general prep, assuming that we have power!

3) I bought and am in the process of reading through an interesting gardening book, Gaia's Garden: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture. I still don't like the title, but I am getting a lot of ideas for our survival orchard. The good news is that many of the plants that are beneficial to include in orchard setups also have medicinal properties. One of my long-term goals was to plant a medicinal herb garden, so the orchard will end up being a two-for-one special.

4) Speaking of the orchard-to-be, I put in several orders for the more exotic items I need for our big planting day in March. You just can't find mycorrhizal inoculant and humic acids at the local farm supply store!

Behold, the fungus! This pricey mycorrhizal inoculant is the key
to growing fruit organically.

Unfortunately those orchard purchases used up all my budget, so I wasn't able to make any headway in the areas of first aid or food storage (unless you count our potential fruit harvests as future food storage!) Well, there's always next month.

The new boxes are yellow ones on the right. They will weather to the same color as the old boxes. 

Hubby Dear and I took advantage of our cuckoo weather and worked out in the garden quite a bit. We constructed the new garden boxes for part one of our expansion, laid down landscaping cloth, and put the boxes in place. The next step will be to make Mel's Mix and fill all the boxes. We'll be planting outside very soon.

My chicks will be arriving even before that.  The kids and I are practically giddy with excitement so we went ahead and set up their home.

For the first month or so, I want to keep the chicks indoors. I might regret that in a few weeks, but for now, I think I'll want to keep a close eye on the little buggers. We chose to set up their brooder in a bathroom since I can pretty much hose down the entire area if necessary. The amount of dust that chicks raise is supposed to be prodigious.

I put down several layers of cardboard, set up the plastic brooder guard to contain the wee beasties, and then put down a couple of inches of pine shavings.

Have a brooder, just need the chicks!

Then I covered up the shavings with a layer of paper towels. These towels will be replaced as necessary for the first week or so. This will encourage the chicks to eat their food, not the shavings. I tested the  heat lamp and adjusted its height so that the temperature at chick height will be around 95 degrees. All that's left to do is fill up the feeder and water fount and we're set.


March Preps: 

1) Chickens!  
-The little buggers will finally get here sometime between March 6-8.

2) Finish chicken moat
-The north end of the chicken moat still needs to be fenced in.

3) Buy a compost bin
-It's strange that we've never ventured into composting despite our interest in organic gardening. I guess I have been too focused on all the other aspects of gardening. Since we're about to have a flock of 17 chickens in addition to our two rabbits, waste management necessitates a venture into composting.

4) Plant orchard and cold-hardy garden vegetables
-March is the first really busy garden month. Our apples, blueberries, strawberries, and raspberry plants are due to arrive and we'll be planting peas, potatoes, and other spring vegetables soon.

5) Buy a few more odds and ends for the orchard 
-I still need to get items for the holistic sprays I'll be using on our fruit - neem oil, effective microbes, and molasses. I'll talk more about these things in future posts.

6) Begin upgrade of our bug out bags (BOBs)
-I know I've been pushing the homesteading aspect quite heavily recently; here's something for you hardcore survivalists. :) I bought our BOBs quite early on in my prepping career and I have learned a few things that I should do differently. I plan to make some changes and upgrade the quality of the equipment over the next few months.

7) First aid
-I'll work on this, I promise! I say that every month, but I really mean it this time. ;)


That's me. How did you prepare during the month of February and/or what do you have in store for March?

Peeps or Pullets? Ways to Get Started in Chicken Keeping

This is the first of a multi-part series chronicling my entry into chicken keeping.
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I've wanted chickens off and on for much of the past decade. The notion came to me in my Martha Stewart-idolizing days when I found out that she had a large flock of chickens in a custom-built "palais de poulet". And they weren't just any chickens. Her fancypants chickens laid eggs in shades of blue and green.

Martha's Palais de Poulet
Image from farmhousemusings.blogspot.com

The idea of gathering Easter eggs laid by chickens housed in a decorative outbuilding was the subject for many a daydream. The fantasy would inevitably end with Hubby Dear and I beating eggs for an omelet in a scene reminiscent of "Ghost", complete with the Righteous Brothers singing "Unchained Melody" in the background.

There are striking differences between Martha Stewart and myself. And not just the fact that she is a convicted felon and I have an over-active imagination. Martha has people. People to walk her dogs, mow her expansive lawns, and muck out her chicken coop. I have no people and I wasn't sure that I wanted to add chicken poop patrol to my job description.

Fast forward to 2011. Chicken keeping has become much more mainstream and hipsters in urban areas all across the country have chickens. If they can have chickens and like it, why not me? After all, I have plenty of space and more than an inclination for self-reliance. After pouring over a thick stack of books on poultry from the library, I threw my doubts to the wayside, coerced Hubby Dear into cooperating via the magical powers of the chicken moat and started making plans for the spring.

Which should come first? The Chicken or the Egg? 

One of the first questions you have to answer once you decide to embark upon the enterprise of chicken keeping is what kind of chickens do you want to get? No, I don't mean what breed of chicken (that will be discussed in an upcoming post), but rather, do you start with hatching eggs, chicks, or pullets?

Hatching eggs

Hatching eggs are fertilized eggs that could potentially develop into chicks, given the right set of circumstances. You can order hatching eggs from professional hatcheries, buy them online from poultry fanciers, or get some from a neighbor who keeps chickens (assuming that neighbor also has a rooster and the eggs are fertile).

Eggs come in a variety of colors
Image from backyardchickens.com

How cool would it be to raise your own chickens from the egg up? As a homeschooler, this is one of those projects that appeals to me for the sheer educational value for my children.

There are some downsides to choosing hatching eggs as the means to get a flock started, however. First,  you'd have to find a source of hatching eggs in the breed or breeds you desire. Hopefully the eggs would make it safely through their journey to your house, but even then, the danger is not over. It takes 21 days in an expensive incubator with careful turning (so the yolk does not stick to the shell) and proper humidity for a chick to develop and hatch out of an egg. Some eggs will never develop at all and some chicks may be too weak to survive. What if all the chicks that hatch out are roosters? Then what? You'd have to start the process all over if you want those fantastic fresh eggs.

Chicks

Image from marinhomestead.com

The second, and probably most popular, way of starting a flock of chickens is buying chicks. You can get a wide variety of chicks through the mail from professional hatcheries, at your local feed store in the spring, and even on Craigslist at times.

Baby chicks can survive for two days without food or water because they are still absorbing the yolk sac from the egg. This marvelous fact means that newborn poultry can be shipped across the country and arrive healthy and (supposedly) happy at your domicile.  Most hatcheries require a minimum order of 25 chicks to insure the chicks stay warm, though there are a few that accept orders as small as three chicks.

You even have a good shot at getting the right sex of bird. You can specify the exact number of each sex you would like or ask for "straight run" (luck of the draw). This is especially useful if you live in an area that bans roosters and you don't want to re-home or eat any male birds. The sexing process is not foolproof, however. Those chicks and their parts are tiny!  Most hatcheries claim to have about a 90% sexing accuracy.

Chickens rapidly grow past the cute fluff ball stage but it takes a while for them to start laying. From my research it appears that a few breeds might lay at 18 weeks of age but 22-25 weeks is more typical. That is a long time and a lot of feed to buy before you get your first egg. That leads me to the last way to start your flock.

Pullets and Hens 

A Welsummer pullet
Image from http://www.north-western-poultry-society.com

You can save a lot of time if you buy chickens that already are old enough to lay eggs. A pullet is defined as a female chicken than is less than a year old. After a year, they have earned the venerable title of hen. You can buy started pullets from a hatchery and almost immediately start collecting eggs. There won't be any surprise roosters included in the bunch. Although started pullets are more expensive than chicks ($7-15 dollars per pullet vs. $1.50-4.00 per typical chick), when you factor in the cost of feed, etc., it's not really that bad a deal.

An even less expensive option would be to check and see if your state agricultural college sells pullets to the public. One of my neighbors bought 8 pullets from the poultry unit at the Ag college. They were 18 weeks old, fully vaccinated, and ready to go when they brought them home.

If you watch Craigslist or the local classifieds, you might find listings for hens. I would approach these with caution. After two years of age, most chickens will lay significantly fewer eggs. As an inexperienced poultry keeper, I would be afraid that someone was trying to pawn off an old hen that had stopped laying.

My choice

For me, the choice was easy. I decided to buy chicks for the cute factor, the educational value of watching them grow, and the ability to get exactly the breeds I wanted.

I also determined that I would order the chicks from a hatchery versus buy them at the local feed store in the spring. My father is a veterinary epidemiologist and has seen the effects of Exotic Newcastle disease and other poultry epidemics firsthand. He strongly recommended that I buy my chicks from a certified disease-free hatchery rather than take the biosecurity risks that come with feed store chicks. Feed store chicks get handled by a lot of people and are housed in an environment that can be a breeding ground for disease. Hatchery chicks, on the other hand, go more or less straight from the incubator to your house.

Hubby Dear and I decided to order about 15 hens, plus a rooster, from a hatchery that would ship less than 25 at a time. Then we were faced with the next big decision: what kinds should we get? That's coming up in Part II of my series on chicken keeping.



Do you have chickens or chicken fantasies? ;) How did you start your flock?