The chicks are here and seem to be settling in well. All are still alive and accounted for on day 4.
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| Removable roosting bars |
I built this portable set of roosting bars for the hens to roost on at night. As you can see, they do most of their "business" at night while roosting. This makes cleaning out the coop easy because it puts the manure all in one place. You can see the delineation between droppings and clean shavings at the front of the bars. Because the droppings are under the bars and out of the way, the chickens don't walk through them allowing me to only clean the coop once a year. Big savings of my time. I was cleaning it out three times per year before I put the bars in. The droppings dry out and do not stink as you may assume.
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| Chicken coop cleaned out |
I built the coop with a trap door side to provide easy access for cleaning. Also, the nests are at one end to allow me to divide the coop and use one end for chick rearing. Above you can see the divider in place. I cleaned this area out in preparation for the coming chicks.
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| New bedding for the coop |
A $5 bag of pine shavings makes a great bedding material for the chicks. It's highly compressed and a little goes a long way. Half a bag filled up the rearing area.
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| Composting chicken litter |
Chicken manure is very high in nitrogen and phosphorus. Much too hot to add directly to the garden. It needs a significant composting period to mellow out. The wood shavings serve as a carbon source for the manure to compost with. I watered it down to activate the bacteria within and by the next morning it was steaming and almost too hot to touch inside. That's a good sign. It means the bacteria are doing their jobs.
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| Newly arrived chicks |
At 6:00 am Monday, the post office called and wanted me to get this box full of cheeping critters out of there. They arrived in a small cardboard box with a compressed straw mat and plenty of air holes.
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| Been a long trip |
Opening the box up, I was greeted by 25 peeping chicks. During the trip, the chicks huddle together to keep warm. This works fine for shipments of 25 or more chicks. Fewer birds than that, they require a chemical heating mat to stay warm enough. Because of this, an order of 25 is often cheaper than smaller orders, if the hatchery will even ship fewer than 25 at all. They don't need to eat for the first few days because, just before hatch, the chicks absorb what remains of the egg yolk into their abdomens. This provides them with a food source for this transition period from the egg to the outside world.
I ordered
Murray McMurray's "Meat and Egg Combo," which is 10 pullets (females) of random brown egg laying breeds and 15 mixed sex Cornish/Rock meat birds. The yellow puff balls in the picture will become large, white meat birds. I have no idea what the layers are. Part of the fun of it is trying to figure it out as their adult feathers grow in.
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| Releasing the new chicks into the coop |
They are gently dumped into the prepared pen. There is a heat lamp shining into one corner to provide them with a warm spot. They will self regulate temperature by moving closer to or further away from the heat lamp's area of focus. The new chicks prefer a 95 degree environment. Ideal ambient temperature declines by 5 degrees a week until week six when it stabilizes at 70 degrees.
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| Getting a drink |
I add a little table sugar to the first water to give them an energy boost after the long ride. They like to get in the water and end up contaminating it with feces. This makes dumping it out and giving them fresh water several times a day essential until they grow large enough that they don't fit into the waterer. I feed them a non-medicated starter/grower crumble, meaning that it does not contain antibiotics. Medicated feed contains low levels of antibiotics and has been shown to provide quicker growth. If you choose to use it, be sure to take meat birds off of it two weeks before slaughter to allow it to pass out of their system.
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| Watching the new arrivals (Sunchokes growing in the background) |
The chicks are a lot of fun to watch. My oldest will not stop asking to go outside and look at them.
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