Keep Chickens!: Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs and Other Small Spaces (13 page)

Why get chicks instead of chickens? To begin, mature chickens aren’t usually available for sale in the local feed stores or from on-line hatcheries. If you can find one for sale, a full-grown hen will cost you about $20 (compared to a baby chick that costs about a buck). After folks have spent several months of time and chicken feed plumping up their hens into maturity, they are not very likely to let them go (would you?).

However, if you really want a head start on hens, pullets that are three to five months old are sometimes sold at feed stores for around $10 each. For my money, I prefer getting a baby chick to raise myself. This way, you get the enjoyment of watching a chick grow up, and the chick knows you all its life. A hen you’ve raised from a chick is apt to be much tamer than an older pullet or young hen you would purchase. Plus, you have no idea how a mature chicken was handled before you brought it home. If you want the bird to be friendly, accustomed to being handled, and as well-mannered as nature will allow it to be, you’d do best to raise it yourself from chickdom.

If you want chicks, get chicks that are already born. Don’t get eggs and try to hatch your own chicks. It’s too involved a venture and requires more time and attention than you probably have to give. Hatching chicks is more appropriate as a science project for kids — after all, they have lots of free time on their little hands. Plus, if you incubate and hatch your own chicks, you’ll have the problem of sexing them.

Sexing
is the professional poultry grower’s term for the process of identifying chick gender. Chicks at the feed store are divided by breed, then subdivided into “sexed” categories, while a batch of unsexed chicks is identified as a “straight run” (includes both female and male chicks, as gender has not been differentiated). If you hatch your own chicks, you’ll get both male and female chicks, but you won’t know which is which until the roosters start crowing. Get girl (a.k.a. sexed) chicks that are a day or two old. By getting them so young, you will bond with them just as well as if you’d hatched them yourself.

Call around several feed stores in your area to see what breeds they have on hand. If you can stand the suspense, visit a couple of the stores prior to purchasing a chick to see who has the best selection and cleanest habitats. Ask your feed store if the chicken breeder who supplies them with chicks is a member of the National Poultry Improvement Plant (NPIP). This organization promotes the responsible breeding of healthy poultry. Picking a chick out of a full brooder is like trying to pick one fish out of an aquarium tank containing four dozen. Yet if you derive pleasure from choosing your own chick, even though she looks exactly like all the others, then the feed store is your place for future chicks.

The downside of buying your chicks at the local feed store is that it may not have eclectic or rare breeds. For this reason, more often than not, be prepared to leave with a healthy, perky baby chick, no matter what the breed.

If you are unwilling to settle for a backup and absolutely have to have that Gold-Laced Wyandotte you’ve read so much about, then turn on your computer and shop at some of the reputable, regional hatcheries. These professional breeders raise lots of chickens, and they raise chicks all year long. If you can’t wait to get started, you can order chicks immediately over the Internet when you start designing and building your coop. While the benefit of shopping at year-round on-line chick hatcheries is having more breed choices, the downside is that many such hatcheries require minimum orders of 25 to 50 chicks (though this trend is changing as more pet chickens hatch in yards across America each day). No matter how well you plead your case to your neighbors or city representative, they are not likely to concede to a pet flock numbering in the dozens. Also, with on-line mail order chicks, there is always the unlikely though distressing possibility of finding a couple of dead chicks in the delivery box. Reputable on-line hatcheries guarantee a live chick to your doorstep. However, be prepared for the possibility of a fatality, and be extra happy when all the chicks you’ve ordered arrive live and peeping.

Poultry Tribune,
circa 1940.

First rule with picking your chicks: no boys — they become roosters, which you can’t keep in a neighborhood yard. Pick chicks whose sex has been determined (known as
sexed
chicks) rather than chicks whose gender will be a surprise
(straight run).
If you were raising chickens for meat, you would get straight-run chicks, as you would not care whether you got roosters or hens since you plan to eat them anyway. However, if you want eggs, you need hens, so get female chicks only. A sexed chick costs about 30¢ more than a straight-run chick, but it’s worth it. For a little over a quarter, there is a 90 to 95 percent breeder guarantee that the chicken will be a female.

When picking baby chicks, avoid chicks that look unquestionably sick, have visible deformities (bent beaks, twisted legs, watery eyes), or are listless, weak, and unresponsive. When you get to the feed store, you may be staring into a large box containing one hundred baby chicks. Spend some time trying to focus on a few chicks so you can visually inspect them. Ask the store employees if you can pick up a couple chicks to take a closer look at them. I’ve always spent an hour or more staring at baby chicks to pick and bring home. By carefully examining my chicks and selecting only the healthiest looking birds, I have never had a single chick mortality.

Be warned: Baby chicks are very cute. Resist the temptation to get more chicks than you need. Chicken farmers sometimes recommend getting 25 percent more chicks than planned because chick mortality is not uncommon when acquiring large numbers. This formula is unnecessary to the keeper of small flocks. If you pick healthy chicks to start with and take care of them — keep them warm, provide plenty of fresh water and food, and change bedding frequently — you shouldn’t have any fatalities in your fledgling flock. Pick only the number of chicks you ultimately want in your flock, and take great care of them!

Poultry Tribune,
circa 1940.

So, you picked out your chicks. Now they’re home with you, still bundled inside a dark cardboard box punched with ragged little breathing holes, frantically peeping. They want out — now! What do you do?

Well, what you should have done before bringing the little ones home was set up their living quarters. No, not that spacious coop you’re building or have finished building out in the backyard. You need something smaller and cozier for the chicks until they are mature enough to tolerate being kept outside. You need a brooder.

A brooder is a wire cage or some other type of ventilated box equipped with an overhanging light source for warmth. Some folks use old aquariums or wood boxes, but I prefer a large wire cage specifically made for the purpose of raising a few baby chicks. These cages or brooders are available at your local or on-line hatchery or feed store. Keep the brooder on a table or countertop in your basement, garage, or spare room while your chicks occupy it. You want the baby chicks close by to monitor them.

Ensure that no drafts will disturb the brooder. A great quick windbreak for a brooder can be as simple as newspaper folded lengthwise into 4-inch (10 cm) strips and taped around the bottom of the cage.

A brooder should provide water, food, warmth, quiet, and security for your new chicks.

A typical brooder cage has a wire floor and sits on top of a removable metal pan for easy cleaning. Lift the cage, line the pan with newspaper, and replace the cage atop the pan. You will need to remove the soiled newspaper and replace it with fresh newsprint at least once daily, or else your chicks will start to stink. Chicks are, and remain throughout their lifetimes, prolific poopers. I always clean my chicks’ brooder twice daily; in the morning after the chicks have had a long night to themselves to sleep and poop, and before my bedtime, so the chicks can rest in clean premises. Just because you’re raising chicks doesn’t mean you want your spare room, garage, or basement to smell like a barnyard!

Put some old rags, towels, or socks on the cage floor. Chicks don’t roost on a perch the first two or three weeks of their life. They fall asleep on the floor where they are standing, eating, or pooping. The rags give them something soft to fall asleep on. Use rags you won’t mind throwing out. Once the chicks sleep (and, of course, poop) on them, you’ll want to throw them away and replace them with fresh sleeping rags daily. Make sure the rags don’t have loose threads on them or the chicks will try to ingest them, which can harm the chicks. I found that old socks are best to use for chick bedding — they have few loose threads and fibers that the chicks can pull on and consume.

After the chicks are a month old, you can place wood shavings on the bottom of the brooder cage. Do not use wood shavings before that first month is over, however. Baby chicks don’t know what’s what yet — in the course of experimental tasting, they will try to eat the shavings. If they do ingest wood shavings, their digestive system may become blocked up (known as
pasting up),
and the chicks may become very ill and die.

Suspend a heat lamp 6 to 8 inches (15–20 cm) from the top of the cage. The temperature in the cage should start out between 90° and 95° F and should be decreased by five degrees each week for the next five to six weeks. Put a thermometer on the cage floor to determine whether to move the heat lamp higher (to lower the temperature) or lower (to raise the temperature).