In March we had lots of chicks and since I'm new to this platform, I want to share what we learned from having our 60 chicks... all at once...
We had them all in our shower!! We weren't using it due to a leak so it worked out for us all OK. Except for the overwhelming stink! I did NOT realize that chicks poop so much and eat like starving hogs. Lucky for them they can play the freakin CUTE card all day long!!
They were so cute and fun to watch. We split them into 2 big storage bins and hung a heat lamp over each one and then we had a fleece blanket hanging across the shower curtain rod to hold in the heat. It was still chilly here so I checked them often to make sure the temps were good.
We had ceramic bowls as feeders and shallow dishes for water in each bin. We fed them as much as they wanted, when the feeder was empty we filled it. Same for water. We used dried pine shavings on the bottom and changed it out completely every other day for the first week or then as they grew bigger we were cleaning it daily.
They did great. As soon as it got warm though we moved their stinky feathery butts out to the big chicken coop.
For the first week, we kept them in a wire cage inside the coop so the older chickens could get to know them safely. Once the big hens weren't paying attention to them we went ahead and let them out into the coop during the day while the hens were free-roaming the yard.
We started out with only 6 hens and we wanted to stock our freezer and start selling eggs sooo....
We got 60 chicks and 6 ducklings at the same time so we could grow them all to about 3 months and cull the roosters for the freezer. We figured with that many chicks our odds of getting lots of hens would be good.
I'd have to say that overall we had fun BUT this next time we get chicks, we are only getting 10 at a time. They eat a lot and we were buying a 50 lb bag of chick starter every week!! If we can stretch that to every month that would be better. We got GMO-free, organic chick feed from our local feed store but we plan to mix our own feed for future animals.
We didn't get to grow this batch very long. We sold them all at about a month old.
We're upgrading our brooding area and making a better coop. We tore down our old one so we will use this as a chance to share the building process. We hope to share lots of great tips and hopefully not make too many mistakes LOL!
Thanks for reading