How to get started with chickens

Here is a quick little primer for getting started with chicks. Honestly getting started with chicks is quite easy. The first handful of weeks they can even live in a big box! Really, easy. It's only when they get bigger that you have more to consider. I'll start with the beginning basics now and as Frankie and I work on the run for the coop I'll show more about coops and tractors and just general chicken housing.

If considering getting chicks the first thing I would do is sign up at backyard chickens. It's really the most comprehensive place for chicken information. You can find anything you've ever wanted to know about raising chicks at BYC. But if you're more of a book type person and just like to hold information in your hand here are a few recommendations for books:

There are a few ways to get your chicks. Around here most common is feed stores, Tractor supply or farmer co-ops. We live in a rural area so when it's chick season you pretty much can find them being sold all over the place. We also have very reputable local hatchers that sell on craigslist. But if those aren't an option for you you can order them online. There are many hatcheries out there. Here's a few of the top hatcheries:
McMurray Hatchery - this is where we always order from when we order for ourselves. The have an insane catalog. If nothing else, order a catalog. You'll learn SO much about chicken breeds!
Ideal Poultry

Cackle Hatchery - This is where our friend who owns a feed store orders from and he likes their service a lot. Meyer Hatchery

Onto basic supplies. You really don't need a whole lot to get started with chicks. You'll need a waterer. Something like this:


You'll also need a feeder. Once again a couple different basic designs. I like the long red ones with the holes. It's what we've always used.

A heat lamp. As chicks are most often sent off as day-olds. In the wild they'd be spending most of their time under the warmth of their Mama Hen and as such NEED a heat lamp. Heat lamps are pretty cheap actually. About $10 or so. Plus a heat bulb - a couple more bucks.

A note on heat. If you notice your chicks always huddling 100% of the time under the lamp it may be a tad too cold. On the other hand, if they are always huddling away from the light, move the light back a bit. Over time you should be able to slowly back off on their heat until they don't really need heat anymore. Hopefully it's warm outside and it will be time to move them out!

What you house them in is up to you. Some use big rubbermaid tubs. Some use big boxes. We've done both in the past. This year we happen to have ours in the house part of a chicken tractor that Frankie and I fixed up. There are actual brooders you can build or buy.
Ours in years past looked something like this:
or this:
Now we haven't used a galvanized tub but I've seen it done a lot. Really anything will work!


And they even sell cardboard brooder "kits". The kits come with heat lamp, that cardboard, the feeders and waterers.


Chicks need heat, food, water and dry housing. Aside from maybe a little love (that they really would do fine without as horrible as that sounds) they will do just fine with that.

And last but not least, here's a little shot of our current set-up. I should say that the ventilation hole up top is covered in chicken wire for safety.

Back to Chickens again

THEY'RE BAAACK!

So this last year Clay decided he officially hates chickens. We've had chickens for years but this last year, well their free-ranging got on his very last nerve. Our first flock didn't really get on the porch for some reason. They were great. The only one of the porch were these rogue roosters that someone dropped off. Now THEY lived on the porch. And drove Clay crazy lol. There was one large rooster that hated Clay. Every time Clay would walk out the door he would crow and crow and crow. I loved that big ole rooster though and it was because of that that Clay didn't kill that giant rooster.

But this last batch of girls, well they just wanted to live on the porches. And if you don't know, chickens that live on porches, well they poop on porches. If they want to roost on top of your standing freezer they poop all over there. And that is a giant mess to clean up. It's unsanitary and gross and Clay was done. So this last year we went from a HUGE flock of chickens down to 3. And he was ready for us to get rid of those last girls.

But chickens are a part of every budding homestead. And after a year of really getting little to no eggs and really missing having home flocks of chickens and ducks, I miss it. And Frankie does too. He's my go-to poultry guy. He feeds, waters, catches rogue poultry and helps me deal with injuries. He goes out late at night if we're not sure we shut the coop doors.

So Frankie and I made Clay a deal. If he would buy the materials we would do all the work and build a large run outside our coop for the chickens to live in. He reluctantly agreed, but agreed.

So what did we run and do as soon as we got the okay? BUY CHICKS OF COURSE! I'll return tomorrow with some pictures of our set-up to show how to start with chicks but here's a few sneak peeks of the little cuties.

Around here today....

Or yesterday or the day before. Around here in the last two or three days. Okay well the last few pictures we've taken....


11 little chickies under a VERY good mom born yesterday!! They're going to be our new layers for next year. Dad is half Rhode Island Red, Half Buff Orpington and most of their moms are RIRs as well though there might be one or two with a Buff Orpington mom. Don't know why my Barred Rock didn't lay in there. But we have two half RIR/Buff O half Barred Rock pullets running around so that's fine. SO much fun getting new batches of chicks. I'm SO over new batches of ducklings this year. If we don't get another duckling until next year it'll be too soon! We've only had maybe 50+ ducklings hatch this year, maybe way more.

Did our first batch of canning Clay and I. 4 quarts of tomatoes, 5 of green beans, 3 quarts of bread and butter pickles and a pint of bread and butter pickles that won't be waiting the 4 weeks to age and get yummier. First time using our ROCKIN' All American canner. Can't wait to can 100 more jars with it~! It's amazing!

Clay's garden has loads of acorn squash growing on it. We'll get more from his garden than we ever thought possible!

Our first garden carrots. Why I wasn't planting these all Summer I don't know, but next year I will be! They're amazing. Amazing.

One of the two kinds of pumpkins that we have growing in Clay's big garden. This is the first one finishing up. We're not really sure when it's going to be done as we've never done pumpkins, but we're read online and hey, live and learn. But it sure LOOKS good right? We have some super cute Cinderella looking sugar pumpkins out there as well.

Just a quick post until later....

Our Chicken Coops New and Old

We've had chickens for forever. It feels that way at least. They've lived in all sorts of places. We've built a number of chicken tractors. They still sit around the homestead. Occasionally a duck or chicken decides they're a good place to raise a bunch of babies. Right now in fact we have a Mommy duck sitting on eggs in one. No one actually lives in them, just random chickens and ducks decide to lay in them now and then. Having a few chicken tractors around is always a good thing though. Whether it's having a good place to quarantine new poultry, a temporary holding place for all sorts of animals, somewhere to raise a new batch of chicks from the feed store or a place for Mommies to hatch babies, everyone should have one around. They're a "Good Thing". In fact here's a happy Duckie Mama working on hatching some baby duckies as we speak.

She's in this old HEAVY chicken tractor. I need it moved for a garden there but man, the last time we tried to move it it tried to just break into a million pieces. :)
We also have the chicken trailer which just an old rickety trailer that we gutted and put roosts and nesting boxes in. The chickens lived in there for the last year. And we moved it more than once. Chicken coops on wheels are convenient for a number of reasons. But the chickens decided on their own to move out. Now the new chicks live in there.
Here's our happy little chickies in their trailer. I am a firm believer in the trailer coop. Cheap. Most people will almost want to pay you to take their old ugly one away. It can move. And easy to gut.

Why the chickens decided to move in with the ducks I'll never know but they did. We needed a new place for the ducks so what we did was run chicken wire all around the bottom of our back porch which is fairly high. I can't stand underneath it but still fairly high. We put a gate on it and presto! In 30 minutes or less we had a complete pen for the ducks.
*note that Adric sprayed the orange marking paint for marking the garden post holes all over the back porch. Dad's yet to see that one. He will soon. Uh oh Adric.

Yet of course, the ducks have decided to just free range in the yard all night. Whatever. I can't tell these things what to do. We used to round them up every night but after months we had enough of that nonsense. Hopefully they fly away when a predator comes. They've survived all winter so who knows. Stubborn creatures.

So the chickens moved in under the porch. The only problem with that is that they stopped laying in regular places. And it's not so safe with the gate open and ducks free. So this weekend we finished up the chicken coop. Note to mom - you'll probably be annoyed we didn't turn this into a playhouse like you wanted but really, even after we cleaned it out, it never would have been clean enough to be a playhouse. It was a mice house for way too long. Yeah it just couldn't get un-icky enough to be a playhouse. Here it is: Forget the stuff out front. We have yet to haul all the stuff we gutted out from it to the dump.
*note since writing this Clay has taken all that stuff to the dump. Hooray!*

We ran roosts on the framing beams.

We had leftover cabinets that work perfectly for nesting boxes and a feeding center. LOVE reusing things for free!
The cabinets worked great for nesting boxes! Clay ran 2x4s across the front not only to keep the straw and eggs in the boxes, but to give the girls a place to easily jump onto from the ground. They're loving the higher boxes. Us women like to make things as difficult as possible. Go figure.

And everyone is happy! They've been laying us eggs everyday in there and things are hunky dory.
And I'm really happy to have one more permanent part of our homestead finished. With so much to do and with the fact it feels like it will be years before anything is really done, as each thing gets ticked off the list, it feels like a huge victory.

The girls should be really happy now. I hope one day to run a small run around it so they can be outside in the morning before we let them out. Hmm... but then that would mean we'd have to have a chicken door open all night so it's open in the morning for them to get out and critters could get in. Well I still want a run so that they can be outside when we go out of town.....someday. We never go anywhere and like it that way.

Welcome our new additions :)

It's a busy time around here. All sorts of fun things going on around here. It makes me always wonder how all these homesteaders with loads of littles have time to blog everyday. Onto our new arrivals.

Meet the Rhode Island Reds. There are more of those guys. 10 in total but these are their spokespeople. Note I said spokesPEOPLE. That guys who got a little out of control with the green marker is the rooster. He better be a good one. We miss our other RIR rooster, Max. Our mean rooster Prince (who's in the freezer now) ran him off and we miss him. Rhode Island Reds aren't usually the kind of chicken to want to be close to humans, but they're not skiddish either and are great egg layers. They have always performed incredibly well for us so we got 10 of them.

Next, meet the Buffs. Buff Orpingtons. We've always had those. Always. They're fluffy and gorgeous and are fairly good egg layers but they are Mommies most of all. They love to set and make us little babies. And Buffs are one of the friendliest chickens out there. We don't really handle our chickens a lot but if we did they'd love for us to pick them up and whatnot. Just sweet chickens. With ONE exception. This doesn't hold true for their roosters. Our mean rooster that attacked kids and babies and adults and other chickens and ducks and was just mean was a Buff Orpington. So glad to be rid of Prince.
Those yellow Buffs are classic little chickies eh?
Here's a grown Buff Orpington:

Onto the Barred Rocks. I only got 4 of them but should have gotten more. They're my favorite "looking" chicken and ours laid all winter this year. Even when everyone else slowed a little she laid and laid. I should have gotten 10 of them!

Their markings look like this. Don't know why it's just a Barred Rock rear end but whatever.
I love Barred markings.

Next onto the Black Sex Links. Here's another one that are egg laying machines and I regret not having more. But honestly. How many eggs a day do we REALLY need? We'll be getting a couple dozen a day during peak season with all these girls. 2 dozen. Black Sex Links are my least favorite looking chickens but definitely the best layers
Here's a little Black Sex Link pullet (a young girl chicken) so you can see the markings
Last but not least the Ameracauanas or "Easter Eggers". They'll be all sorts of different colors and they lay all sorts of different color eggs. Okay well mostly green but all sorts of shades of green. We always get some of these each year because the kids can pick one for "their" chicken that is a totally different color than anyone else's. Last year we had "Fluffy, Cocoa, and Isabella". This year we have "Nana" (Mom bought em for us and so we bought one that's for her and named after her), and the kids have yet to name theirs. Well they've named them a few times but nothing has sticked yet
The first one is Adric's. You can't see it but it has a cool looking cheetah face. The next is Frankie's. It looks just like his one from last year. The striped head one is Cassie's. It's a cool looking chick for sure. And last but not least. Nana :)

They lived a few days in a box in the house but now live in the trailer that was in the tour thread. They have two heat lamps in there and are healthy and thriving despite it being down in the teens at night. They'll be in there for quite a while. Right now they're only allowed in about a third of the trailer and it's more than big enough. So they should be fairly big before they outgrow it. The hens are mad though because they started laying eggs in there. They walk around it mad and squawking. So I guess I will be finishing up the chicken coop ASAP. Our black australorp has taken to laying on Clay's work bench on the back porch for some odd reason.

Alright off to real life.