5 Tips For Raising Chickens

Chick Days are coming up at stores like Agway and Tractor Supply.  This is the time of year when live chicks arrive in many stores.  

In the Spring of 2018 we decided to add a little fun to our life and we purchased baby chickens from Tractor Supply. Since we had knowledge of how to care for chickens from our time at the farm, we knew it wasn’t going to be a big undertaking for us.  I’m here to share five tips for raising chickens.  This post contains affiliate links.

Best Tips for Raising Chickens

1. What To Do When You Bring The Chicks Home

These fuzzy little creatures are so adorable and all you want to do is cuddle with them. That is ok but you do have to be very careful that you don’t drop them. They do not have wings yet and they are still clumsy on their feet.

• When you bring them home you need to provide a large enough area with pine shavings for them to walk around, and they need to be kept warm with a heat lamp.
• You shouldn’t bring them into your house. You can set up an area in a mud room or your garage. They will grow quickly.
• They will need special food which contains an antibiotic, and 20% protein. Feed them that food until they begin to lay eggs. Then you switch their feed to a layer’s feed.
• They also need water.  Often times they will get their pine shavings in their water so you have to make sure to clean that out often.

2. What Happens When They Start To Outgrow Their Habitat

As the chickens start to grow you will need to expand their space to allow them to have more room. They still need to be cared for indoors and with heat for at least a month to six weeks depending on where you live and the temperatures. They also need to grow their feathers to stay warm on their own.

3. Moving The Chickens To A Coop

When the chickens are old enough and strong enough to move into a coop you can place them in any type of coop. You can purchase one, build one, or do what we did and retrofit part of our shed to house our birds.

My husband built a coop for our birds in a section of our shed in the backyard.  This works out perfectly so they can leave the coop and roam in the run that he set up for them.

What Do The Chickens Need In Their Coop

• Shelter from the rain and predators
• An area to roost
• A nesting box to lay eggs
• An area to walk around
• A feeder
• Food
• Water

If you have pine shavings or wood chips in your coop, you will need to clean it out about once a month. You’d be surprised at how much poop chickens make!

It’s also very important to protect the birds from predators. In our town, we have had an abundance of hawks.

One afternoon we heard the chickens squawking, so we rushed down there to find that a hawk had gotten into their area and one of our birds was injured. She was coughing blood and was breathing heavily. We brought her into the shed and kept her apart from the other birds while we cared for her. Thankfully she recovered just fine.

Soon after that, my husband built an outdoor protected area for them to forage for worms and bugs. He has reinforced that area with deer netting so we think they should be 100% safe now.

4. What To Do When Chickens Begin Laying Eggs

When your birds begin laying eggs you need to switch their feed to a layers feed which contains 16% protein.

They prefer to lay their eggs in a nesting box.  Typically they don’t lay their eggs where they eat and poop.  So that’s why it is important to have a nesting box.

If they get confused and start laying eggs in an area separate from the nesting box, then you can give them some encouragement by adding a few golf balls into the box to give them a visual clue that the eggs need to be there.  This method truly does work!

Did you know that you don’t have to put fresh chicken eggs in the refrigerator?

• When chickens lay an egg there is a special coating on the egg called a bloom. This is a natural seal for the eggs.
• When you purchase eggs from a store the eggs have been washed and the bloom has been stripped off of the eggs. Therefore they must be refrigerated.
• You can keep the eggs on your chicken counter for up to five weeks!
• If you choose to wash farm fresh eggs, then you will have to refrigerate them.

5. Other Tips To Know About Raising Chickens

Raising chickens is a lot of fun. They are very easy to care for and having your own fresh eggs is priceless. We purchased 15 chicks when we bought ours but three of them were roosters.

In our town you are only allowed to have one rooster if you are not classified as a farm. Since we are friends with Jeff Andrews, the farmer up the street, we were able to give our roosters to him.

You will know your bird is a rooster by their size, they will grow a spur on the back of their legs, and they will start to crow.

Depending on the type of chicks you purchase will determine the color of eggs they produce. We have Black Sexlinks that lay brown eggs.

If you want turquoise eggs, you need to purchase the following type of birds:

• Ameraucana
• Araucanas
• Cream Legbar
• Easter Eggers

If you prefer white eggs, you can get them from:

• White Leghorn chickens
• Lt. Brown Leghorn Chickens

Having chickens is a great experience for you and your children.  I love having them.  I look forward to collecting their eggs each day, I like to let them free range in our yard when we are around, and the kids love having something to care for.

It’s a great learning experience for the children to also understand the circle of life.  We lost one of our chickens due to natural causes, but she was very special to us because we cared for her when she was only a few weeks old.  She was the runt from a flock Jeff got, so he gave her to us to care for.  She immediately became our special pet and we grew very attached to her.  You can check out the video footage we kept of her on the Chickie Channel.

It was a heartbreaking day when she died.  But it also helped the children understand how to deal with grief from the loss of a family pet, and it helped me as a parent learn how to handle such a situation with my children.  Hopefully, these tips for raising chickens will be helpful to you should you decide to get some of your own.

Did I inspire you to raise chickens? Please comment below if you have any questions or if you are going to raise your own birds! I’d love to hear your stories!