First time raising chickens, need help.

Hi everyone, I am so glad i found this website and forum. I am looking forward to sharing my experience with all of you and asking questions that most of you with more experience than me will be able to answer. So here is the first one:
We are going to get chicks this spring to raise for eggs. We are a family of 4 and so just 6 will do, but the guy at the store we went to was very adamant on us either getting them inoculated or buying the Purina feed with medication and use it for 90 days. First of all, I do not want to get that feed because I know for a fact that most of the ingredients will be GMO, and I am a big GMO free advocate. (formed my own group in Buffalo, NY) I want to raise them as healthy as possible but as naturally as possible and 100% organic. He says the Purina is better quality than the organic feed. I just wonder if we have to get feed at all. What do you recommend? Do we have to give them medication the first 60/90 days of life? Also, if we plan on letting them forage spring summer and fall, can we just feed them veggie scraps in winter? And if so how much? I read that they need protein too byt how would they get bugs in winter? If we HAVE to give them feed we will only give them the organic non GMO type, from a local feed mill if possible unless you can recommend a good one. I really appreciate your help on this. I'm so excited to get these hens!

I also have a question about living quarters and what's best for us but I will leave that one for another post.

Thank you!
Carla

No, they don't need medicated feed. Find a different store.

You should start out with "chick starter" because they do need a good amount of protein, esp as chicks. If you really don't want to do this get some old books on GoogleBooks to see how they did it 100s of years ago. I think early on they gave them mashed hard boiled eggs & milk (high protein foods).

I did have lots of chicks hatched here this summer that I did not give chick starter to but they had mothers to show them what to eat. The mothers and chicks were also free range so they had many options.

Chickens can't live on just kitchen scraps unless they are very free range. Even then, you will need to feed them in the winter (if your location is Buffalo).

I bought some chicks that were not fed chick starter. Their feathers are a mess and they were ugly. The first sign of too low protein is the feathers come out wrong. It's really the limiting factor in trying to feed them your own mix. I always use chick starter unless there's a mother hen to feed them - even then she needs a rich environment - plenty of compost/leaf mould to scratch in, manure piles help too, and it needs to be late enough in the spring for there to be enough food for her to find (mine now are hatching eggs with snow on the ground!). If you already have access to plenty of dairy it might be possible to give them curds or something as a protein source.

If you want to go non GMO, and they are free-range with a good environment, then you can do pretty well feeding them either wild bird seed mixes (with no corn or soy powder added) or plain oil sunflower seeds (they eat them whole and do fine). Mine have learned to flip the manure patties in the pasture and are eating the worms they find underneath like crazy. I've got around 16 banties and 6 large hens and they're eating about 3 cups of feed a day and leaving some for the wild birds. I could probably feed them less but I do like to feed the wild birds too. If you can find local farmers to buy from (or grow your own) barley, milo, wheat, oats all made decent food for free-range birds. Some may even be growing non-GMO corn they could sell you but I prefer to stay away from all corn these days.

To go fully home-mixed feeds it really helps to have a worm bin. But growing chickens eat a LOT. You might run out of worms.

Check out soldier flies. Great way to convert trash and manures of all sorts directly into protein feed. The main problem is they need a warm climate and will only produce in the summer.
As mentioned above, letting the mother hen raise the chicks seems to make a big difference. She teaches them how to look for and scratch for bugs and worms, at which the babies might be lackadaisical otherwise. Breed makes a difference too. Those hybrids with big breasts and fast growth are for the factory farms. They just sit by the feeder and wait to be fed. The birds bred especially for laying have their own problems--nervous and flighty. Go for an older, all-purpose breed.
I supplement with whole grain, and I try to sprout it, or at least soak it, which improves the nutrition considerably, just as it does for us. But that is for older birds. Babies will need any sort of grain to be ground or mashed....
The other thing is that I've found the biggest difference between a healthy bird and an unhealthy one, protein aside, is plenty of fresh greens. Chickweed has that name for a reason. It's small and tender enough for babies. Having chickens motivates you to keep the garden weeded....the weeding has another yield!

Agreed...no medication needed but if you are getting them from a hatchery source, it's a good idea to start probiotics from day one. I use mother vinegar in the water and also feed chick starter in buttermilk for the first few days if I don't have a broody mama available~then I move on to fermented feeds if it is too cold for good foraging outdoors.

Non GMO is really tough to find these days and folks are finding that they struggling to find the right nutrition for hatchery stock birds.....the problem being is that their survival traits on free range can be spotty, much less expecting them to produce eggs on it when they have been bred for many years now to subsist on factory milled feeds.

I would suggest you get real comfortable with the notion of culling for certain traits if you want a flock that can dig for a living out on free range.

My grandma used to raise chicks on corn meal...that's it. They were all broody raised, so they only had to eat chick foods for about a week...three of those days they are still living off their yolk sac, so the issue of proteins were a non issue back then. After a week they were out on range with the rest of the flock, eating what chickens are supposed to eat. Grandma never fed anything but corn meal to chicks and whole corn~shucked right off the cob each day. Of course, she grew her own corn too...so vastly different food compared to what we have now.

I have been using fermented feeds this year and have used them on CX chicks and am very pleased with the results....probiotics with every bite and changes the undigestible proteins of grains into something that can be utilized by a monogastric animal.

Here's some good info about probiotics found in ACV for chick health:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/632840/prevention-of-coccidiosis-and-other-poultry-diseases-in-chicks-acv/70#post_10032353

wow! thank you so much. This is actually the first time I get a reply on a forum like this. My questions always seem to vanish into cyber space.
I will try the organic chick starter in buttermilk for my babies.
Someone recommended McMurray Hatchery. Looks like they have a wide selection of hens.
I also read the entire article about the methods of raising chickens and we decided that we will do a coop for night time and a larger than usual tractor that we will move 1 or 2 times per day, and let the chickens out whenever we are outside to roam free. The only reason we decided on this is because we are afraid of predators while we are inside the house or if we go out. We have a fair amount of fox and also hawk and turkey vultures. We want to make the tractor more like a covered paddock. Hope this is a good idea.
Thanks again to everyone.

I showed up to ask similar newbie questions. Thanks for letting me tag along... and for the great info! We're getting our first chicks this week (6 of them). We live in a suburban neighborhood on one acre. We would love to let the chickens free range (paddocks) in one section of our property (around half an acre) that has berry-producing ground cover and several existing mulberry trees. (We would also plant other things like sunflowers, sunchokes, more berries, etc.). Buuuuttttt.... we're struggling with the balance of needing things to be aesthetically pleasing (want to keep the neighbors happy!) and very low-cost. And to be honest, that part of the yard has a very 'park-like' feel to it and my husband isn't keen on breaking it up with fences. If anyone has ideas for this newbie on fencing that would be inexpensive but 'suburb approved' I would appreciate it! Meanwhile, we're planning on a coop and run. Carla - I hope you'll come back during the season and let us know how your experience is going!

We used to live on a 1 acre suburban lot and had chickens. We fenced in our back yard with the split rail fencing that had 2" X 4" mesh stapled to the inside. Our birds almost never flew over it (I think it was 4 feet high). The fence was nice because it kept the neighbor's dogs out of our yard/garden, etc. We let the hens just run free in the back yard during the day and shut them in a coop at night. The neighbors enjoyed watching them and their kids fed them from time to time. We shared eggs with those who wanted some.

Be sure to check that it's legal where you live. Talk to your neighbors and see if they mind. Our hens did cackle a bit when they laid an egg or saw a hawk. They're not quiet, even if you don't have roosters. But our neighbors didn't complain. The ones least likely to be sympathetic said they keep the windows closed most of the time and didn't even hear them. If you think any of your neighbors may have a problem you may be able to get silkies instead - they're so cute and fluffy most people love them at first sight. But they do tend to get carried off by hawks more than the full sized ones, so if you do that buy extras and make sure they have good cover (brambles work good).

Chickens aren't destructive if you only have a handful. They do dig mulch away from your trees, etc. so you'll have to fence them out if you have something you want to mulch - you'll also need to fence them out of a garden, but you'd be keeping out rabbits too so that's good. You may also want to fence off your deck/patio or you can count on it being a chicken hang-out and getting poopy. I noticed the grass quality in the back yard where the hens lived became better over time, so after 10 years of having them the back stayed green well into a drought while the front turned brown like the neighbors' yards. They also ate out a lot of weeds so after awhile the lawn was mostly grass, clover, and plantain, without many of the weeds that grew in the front lawn.

Katie Shank wrote:I showed up to ask similar newbie questions. Thanks for letting me tag along... and for the great info! We're getting our first chicks this week (6 of them). We live in a suburban neighborhood on one acre. We would love to let the chickens free range (paddocks) in one section of our property (around half an acre) that has berry-producing ground cover and several existing mulberry trees. (We would also plant other things like sunflowers, sunchokes, more berries, etc.). Buuuuttttt.... we're struggling with the balance of needing things to be aesthetically pleasing (want to keep the neighbors happy!) and very low-cost. And to be honest, that part of the yard has a very 'park-like' feel to it and my husband isn't keen on breaking it up with fences. If anyone has ideas for this newbie on fencing that would be inexpensive but 'suburb approved' I would appreciate it! Meanwhile, we're planning on a coop and run. Carla - I hope you'll come back during the season and let us know how your experience is going!

John Polk mentioned the value of electric poultry fencing to fence birds out of areas and this is an application of that tool that might interest you. They are very neat and clean in appearance, can be run on a small solar charger and will be worth every penny you pay when used for this purpose. When you have a great yard with many beautiful features but you also want to range chickens there, it's imperative that you have a fence that is flexible in design, easy to move and with a pleasing appearance. The electric fencing also has the added benefit of protecting your chickens from stray dogs.

Here's a pic of a Premier fence and, at a $1 a ft, is more bang for your buck than other types of fencing:

One thing with the electric fencing is that you must clip the chickens wings. It doesn't hurt them, just makes flying tough.

You've had chickens fly out of electric paddocks?

I have had chickens and turkeys fly out of permanent paddocks 4-6' tall!

After watching that new Geoff Lawton survival video I posted a question to the comments section wondering why the chickens don't fly out. He said they clipped the wings once and then they stopped trying to fly out. My turkeys (Royal Palms - a light breed) have started flying out 2 years after I originally cut their wings.

Clipping the wings doesn't work well.
Clipping one wing is much more effective.

With both wings clipped, they just try harder.
With one wing clipped, their flight is so awkward & uneven, they usually quit trying.

We never clipped ours. Just stuck with the heavier breeds (they also tend to be more gentle so more child-safe) like orpingtons and cochins. We had some ameraucanas but if the rest of the flock stayed in the yard they would too. It all depends on how much space they have inside the area and if they're let out occasionally (if you give them a big space and they are never let out they just think of it as their home turf and don't try to leave). With the heavier breeds they're also less likely to be carried off by hawks and bothered by neighborhood cats - we had hawks hang out around the yard and do fly-bys on our hens but they never successfully took any grown birds.

Another thing about the cochins and orpingtons is they're supposed to be quieter than some of the other, more high strung birds.

They need shelter - more than just a building - well-placed shrubs, furniture, and brambles they can run under when there are hawks around. Even if the hawks can't lift them, the hens get very frightened to see them swooping down and if they don't have shelter they may try to fly out to somewhere where they can hide and feel safe.

A grass lawn is a terrible way to raise chickens - no diversity of species, very little food they can get to, and they feel vulnerable. Ours spent most of their time in the wooded part of our yard, scratching around the fallen leaves, sticks, under leafy plants, etc. There, they were so much more likely to be able to get to worms and find centipedes, etc. They like woody/brushy areas best, with some grass for grazing.

Hi, If you must buy feed, Scratch & Peck Feeds offer a GMO Free/ No Soy Feed. Great product, sustainable company. http://www.scratchandpeck.com/

Yes, I cut one wing. I thought it was always plural, like scissors!

Yes, I cut one wing. I thought it was always plural, like scissors!

That's just one of those quirks of English. But, it is a 'pair of scissors'...just like a pair of pants.
As George Carlin once quipped, "Why does a woman buy a pair of panties, but only 1 bra?"

I have known people to clip both wings, and then wonder why the birds still fly over the fence.

A grass lawn is a terrible way to raise chickens - no diversity of species, very little food they can get to, and they feel vulnerable. Ours spent most of their time in the wooded part of our yard, scratching around the fallen leaves, sticks, under leafy plants, etc. There, they were so much more likely to be able to get to worms and find centipedes, etc. They like woody/brushy areas best, with some grass for grazing.

If a person doesn't have wooded areas, the pasture or open yard area is definitely preferable to coop and run existence. Depending upon that open area, there can be many opportunities for food and areas of cover, manmade or natural, and chickens always feel vulnerable....they are the prey of many. Wooded areas do not decrease that feeling of vulnerability. Cover and guard animals helps in both grassland and woodland areas of range.

I'm sorry - I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Yes, grass is better than a run/coop with bare dirt. To be as happy as possible and have the best opportunity to follow their built-in instincts and raise their own babies they need a mix of wooded/shrubby areas and some grass.

I'll start by saying we got our first chickens in June of last year, so keep in mind I'm no expert as I type this stuff. We fed ours commercial starter then grower for the first 2 months. By that time I had found a source for organic feed; I live in Oklahoma and have to drive to a mill in Kansas for feed, nobody in Oklahoma sells or is willing to order organic. My chickens all did fine. I have a friend who raised a small batch of Australorps and bought a little bit of organic grower from me, he started his chickens on it at around 1 month old, his have all done fine.

As far as I'm concerned the first rule of chicken housing is try to make it pretty, or your wife is going to hate it. Just because I live in Oklahoma doesn't mean it has to look like it belongs in a trailer park. Now before I started building, I hadn't read Paul's treatise on paddock shifting chickens, so here's what I did:




I got the idea from a book published by Backwoods Home, where you set up your coop so chickens can exit either side. One year you let them out into a run on one side, then the next year they get the run on the opposite side. The idea is they poop and kill every bit of insect and vegetation to prepare your garden. Their waste you just shovel out one side and you have a ready made compost heap you can just drag into whatever side you're planting. And rainbows will shine overhead, unicorns will show up and poop marshmallows too.

What I do like about it, its off the ground. At least this way when there is a foot of snow on the ground, the chickens can go underneath and get real dirt to scratch around on. What I don't like about it: Its hard to get underneath to rake out the poop and straw that falls through. I wish I had made it a bit higher, but many of the dimensions of the coop were dictated by what material I had around the house, not what suited it best. The compost idea doesn't work so well. Sure I get a lot of poo and straw from the coop, but it turns out just dragging it out of the coop, then rotating the compost pile, then moving said compost into the garden is a lot of handling of poop. I'll discuss what I would do differently later. Also, I call the structure "Chicken Fortress 2000", because I was really worried about raccoons with superhuman strength who can tear poultry netting and have the intelligence to dismantle my coop. I dug a trench 1 ft into the ground around the bottom, put up chain link fence around the base, then put hardware cloth over that (since raccoons can reach through chain link), then concreted all that into the trench, one foot in the ground. I then sat back and dared any animal to try to dig underneath or break in by any means. Turns out my chickens just fly over the run fencing, and they coyotes get them when they're outside. This prompted me to put a bit taller fencing on it, so now the run/garden is almost 7 ft tall. By sheer luck I did buy cheaper green vinyl covered wire, which hides pretty well and doesn't look too gawdy.

My chickens do get to free range when I'm home, when I'm gone there are just too many predators. We didn't clip their wings because we thought if one of them gets out and is being chased by a coyote, it would be beneficial for the chicken to be able to fly. The problem/benefit with keeping them in one area is they kill any vegetation. So now if I plant a bed of asparagus or any other perennials, now you have to keep the chickens out of that bed when they're rotated back in. In the beds at the base of my cute little gate, I'm planting grapes and strawberries, I'm hoping it looks kick ass when covered in grape vines. But now I need to find a way to keep the stinking chickens out of it...year round.



So what would I do differently? The composting is too much work. The solution would be to get pigs to move the compost around. I haven't been able to talk my wife into getting pigs yet, and even if she was onboard, I still have to fence the other side of the coop before we plant our garden this year. I've never raised pigs, but I'm guessing they need a lot more fencing than chickens do. Instead of handling the compost more, I would leave the stairs off the back side to where I can just pull up with my atv and cart and fill the cart rather than making a pile on the ground then moving around the pile. If I had a skid steer or tractor with a bucket (on my wish list) I would put the chickens far away from the garden. We are about to deal with the problem of keeping chickens out of the food forest. We're planting quite a few fruit trees, and its just a matter of time before we have to figure out how to keep the chickens out of the trees and out of the mulch. Lots of other small problems I really don't have solutions to.

When we got our chickens, I got some Black Copper Marans, some Rhode Island Reds, the second round I got more BCM's and some Australorps. What we found from people buying eggs, they all want the dark, black speckled Black Copper Maran eggs, though as far as I can tell, they all taste the same. So we made the decision to start selling off our other breeds, bought a small incubator and hatching our own on a small scale. Since its winter here, we keep the newly hatched chicks in a box indoors for around 3 weeks. They they go out to the garage in a 2x6 ft brood box. Just for fun, when I got to doing the math, those stupid 250watt heat lamps cost $12.36/month EACH! We have to keep one on the chicks indoors, and on the older ones in the garage, they require 2 lamps to keep warm. Thats close to $40 a month just to keep stupid chickens warm! The moral of the story: don't hatch chicks over the winter. Here's the other problem, chickens are abusive little monsters. You can't put your 3 week old chicks in with your 2 month old, they'll get the hell beat out of them. So now I need a hatching box, a brood box, and since they're not big enough to go into the coop with the adults, an inbetween box. So I'm in the process of building a tractor, which I'm calling "Chicken Internment Camp". I should finish it up today, and I'm sure within a week I'll find all sorts of problems with the larger tractor model.

Would growing meal worms and crickets work? You need to keep them warm, but they're high in protein and fat.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-to-raise-mealworms

http://cricket-breeding.com/cricket-care/

Large numbers of crickets become a stinky mess. I've raised them before.

Mealworms are very very easy to raise, the trick with them is to keep mites from infesting the colony. I left a colony alone for months (I forgot it) and when I remembered it and looked in there were TONS of mealworms in there! With them, you just need good numbers to keep the chicks fed throughout their early development. They are slow to reproduce, tho, so you'd need to start them well in advance of when you want them.

Another possibility if you have mulberry trees is silkworms. You can buy eggs online and raise them on just mulberry leaves. When they first hatch they're tiny, and they get bigger as the chicks' ability to swallow big things increases. The problem with them is the initial cost of the eggs - $20 if you're really lucky. Once you've got some you can let some mature and collect their eggs (don't worry the moths are flightless), store them in the refrigerator and use them the next spring. My eggs didn't hatch the following year, I guess I stored them wrong.

If you can get a pair of Dubia Roaches (ask someone who has pet lizards) you can have a tropical roach colony. They can be ignored for long periods of time and just keep reproducing, but they're kind of big for little baby chicks. They'd work well for turkey poults, tho.

Pill bugs (some call them wood lice or roly-polies) are easy to raise in a colony as well. I think they just need compost/leaves and twigs. And an escape-proof container. Some vaseline around the top of a fish tank or rubber tub works pretty well until it gets dirty. Be aware if you want to keep them in your greenhouse, they will eat the stems of baby plants. In the garden they aren't much of a nuisance but in large numbers they can be destructive.

One more newbie question: I'm a little nervous about the right timing for putting my chicks outside. I'm in Southwest Michigan so April weather can be unpredictable (70's one day and snowing literally the next). I've read that the chicks can/should go outside somewhere around 4-6 weeks. They'll be five weeks old on April 1. If they go out to their coop at that age and it gets really cold and snowy, will they be ok? Thanks for your patience and answers!

I put mine out of the actual brooder, which is usually outside anyway, by the time they are 2 wk. old or when they are mostly fledged..since mine are raised in cooler conditions than most, they fledge early. If yours are coming from inside and have had a controlled environment, you will need to harden them off just like plants/seedlings grown indoors in order for them to adapt well.

At the age you have now, they should have all their feathers and they shouldn't have a problem~ but since they've been "hothouse" chickens all this time and you worry about the cold, you might provide a corner of the coop that has a heat lamp they can visit if uncomfortably cold. Watch how often they use it, if at all, and you will know when they have adapted to the temp fluctuations found outdoors when they no longer source that heat.

If using this option, please use heat lamps with caution in coops or brooders by securing them in such a way that they can never, ever touch bedding or coop structures of wood.