New to chickens, seeking advice

Hey folks,

I'm reading up and planning to get my first chickens, any advice? Some questions I have...

-Recommendation on where to get spring chicks in the Missoula area, hardy breeds...
-What is your best coop layout/ plan? Have you built a Chickshaw?
-What are some good, healthy foods, bugs & feed for chicks and hens?
-Lessons of what not to do

Appreciate your feedback, stay well!
-K

-Recommendation on where to get spring chicks in the Missoula area, hardy breeds...
Can't help with Missoula per se, but any of the big hatcheries like Cackle, Murry McMurry, etc are good sources and I've had good luck with mail ordering chicks.  I've also had decent luck with feed store chicks.  If you want roosters then finding a neighbor or a local poultry group frequently has straight run chicks available.  If you don't care much about breeds this can be a good way to get chicks at a good price (sometimes free).  

-What is your best coop layout/ plan? Have you built a Chickshaw?
Coop layout is pretty individual.  I like having a poop-hammock for a fixed coop (literally a cloth hung under the roost bars to catch the poop - very easy to clean it out).  A mobile coop has the advantage of distributing the poop for fertilizer.  Have not built a chickshaw personally.

-What are some good, healthy foods, bugs & feed for chicks and hens?
Give them access to a decent feed and they'll forage for whatever they need.  More so than things to give them, there's a list of things not to give them.  Onions, uncooked potatoes, avocado.  There's others, but a goodly mix of kitchen and garden scraps, and free access to grass/weeds/bugs in the yard is all they really need.

-Lessons of what not to do
Don't totally free range them unless you're OK with their poop on your deck, front steps, car, etc.  Make sure you have good predator proofing.  

Hi Kellios, welcome to Permies.

I don’t have recommendations on where to purchase spring chicks in Missoula, but others here live in the area and maybe they know a place or a breeder. Another option is to get chicks through the mail from a hatchery and I’ve done this before. For hardy breeds, I suggest browsing a hatchery website and see what their recommendations are. Some things to consider are breeds with a pea comb compared to one with a tall floppy comb that is more prone to frostbite.

There are perhaps a million coop designs out there. I’ve built two. The first was on skids and could comfortably accommodate about 15 birds. Skids kinda suck I think and it quickly became too small. I built a second coop on wheels and it can accommodate 50 birds and has seven nesting boxes. Most people who begin to raise chickens start with a handful, enjoy it so much and fall in love with chickens and find themselves getting more the following year and sometimes needing a larger coop.

Organic feed is too expensive for me to justify. I purchase a non-gmo non-certified organic clean feed for my chickens from a regional small farm. Chicks will need chick starter feed to start. I switch to broiler feed when starter runs out and layer feed once they’re approximately 20 weeks or so of age and begin laying. They’ll find bugs on their own.

Lessons I can share that I’ve learned is not to let them out too early in the pre-dawn morning cause they wake up early and will go out if they have access and owls can get them. I do recommend electric net fencing to keep four legged predators out.

Hope this helps!

I dont know bout where you at but at a city near me there is a rural king store and every Thursday the get delivery of about a dozen different breeds of chicks and ducks and ginnies
ands rabbits too. the prices are the same as local farmers coop which only gets chicks in the spring time. usually the people that work there know a little bit of something about them

James Freyr wrote: I built a second coop on wheels and it can accommodate 50 birds and has seven nesting boxes.

50 birds? That must be huge. Can you share the design?

I'm in the process of building my first chicken tractor, mostly from existing materials.

Cheers,
Dieter

Thanks All for your feedback!

Another question that came up over coffee this morning...

Do you use lights for chicks to stay warm? If so, is there a good type you'd recommend?

I"m thinking of starting chicks inside my shed but it gets pretty cold here in Montana, I have some grow lights but am not sure if they would get too hot for the wee ones?

-K

Kellios Mac wrote:Thanks All for your feedback!

Another question that came up over coffee this morning...

Do you use lights for chicks to stay warm? If so, is there a good type you'd recommend?

I"m thinking of starting chicks inside my shed but it gets pretty cold here in Montana, I have some grow lights but am not sure if they would get too hot for the wee ones?

-K

Using lights is one option. I don't prefer it since having a light on 24/7 isn't best for their natural rhythms of sleep and waking. I know I wouldn't want to grow up in a room that was brightly lit all the time.

I used a plate brooder for my chicks and thought it was awesome. I used the Brinsea ecoglow, but imagine there are others. It's more similar to a mother hen, as they can run under there to warm up and then go back to chick stuff as they feel appropriate. No bright lights. Also uses very little electricity and much less of a fire/safety hazard than heat lamps can be. It was a little expensive, but I felt it was worth it so they could have a more natural night/day cycle.

Dieter Brand wrote:

James Freyr wrote: I built a second coop on wheels and it can accommodate 50 birds and has seven nesting boxes.

50 birds? That must be huge. Can you share the design?

Cheers,
Dieter

I made a bunch of posts about the build in the mobile chicken coop thread starting here: https://permies.com/t/25204/Mobile-Chicken-Coop-Build#961695

I didn't really have a design and just started building with an idea I had.

I second the mail order option for chicks. I ordered my first chicks from Purely Poultry and it was great, no problems.

Chickens handle cold better than heat, but of course chicks are different. We keep ours in the house until old enough to be in the coop with the Brinsea brooder that was previously mentioned.

I have a stationary coop. Most important thing to coop design in my mind is good ventilation. Chickens need lots of ventilation but not drafts on their roosts. So I have a shed roof on my coop and the triangles at the top are covered in hardware cloth as well as windows and a hardware cloth covered door. My biggest mistake was having the door to the run on the downhill side of the run so all the compost pushes up against the door. I'm planning on enlarging the run and moving the door to fix this.

Thanks for your reply and suggestions for the brooder and ventilation. I"ll definitely see about the Brinsea, that looks like a great option.  

Hi Kellios,
I wanted to comment on the chickshaw. While I have not built the Justin Rhodes version, I have build the Eliot Coleman version. His uses metal conduit bent to form a sort of quanset hut shape. I like the look of it, and at the time it was cheaper than all the wood needed for the Justin Rhodes version. Overall I have really liked it, but there are a couple things I found.

1. It was much harder to attach the door and nesting boxes than I thought. I was able to do it, but it was not as easy as it might have been in a wooden structure.
2. It is much heavier with the chickens in it than I anticipated. The coop was easy to move when I first build it. Then I loaded it up with 30 adult Black Australorps (avg 5.75 pounds), and it got over 150 pounds heavier. The size was supposed to work for 50 birds. I can still move it ok, as an adult male, but it is harder than anticipated.
3. Get the handle height correct for your height. I think this is important. I am fairly short, and I adjusted the handles for me... though not enough. Had I used their suggested angles, it would have had me holding the handle over shoulder height just to move it.
4. In that design, I had an issue with a broken elbow connector, that I thought would not be a problem. It caused the wheel to bend in towards the coop, rubbing along it and making it hard to roll. I had to fix it twice before I got it tight enough.
5. My biggest frustration was the recommendation to use 1/2inch hardware cloth for the bottom. The concept of a moveable coop is to spread the poop around and not have to clean as much. 1/2inch is too small and too much of the poop stays in, and has to be hosed out every so often (which is not all that easy, as I generally take it out of the pen when I do it, and the chickens want to follow the coop. If I were to build it again, I think I would try 1inch, because I don't have a lot of predators that could get through 1inch that wouldn't be stopped by the electric fence.
6. Having said all that... I still REALLY like it. I have moved it all over my lawn/field last fall and this summer. I notice a difference in the thickness of the grass and the color where the chickens have been compared to the "no chicken zone" my wife has established closer to the house. I do believe it helps with health because you can easily move them to a new clean area and let the poop turn into plant food. My field is not super thick, and I move them every couple days depending on the time of year, sometimes every day, and sometimes I can get away with 3 or 4 days.

Good luck. There are many ways to raise chickens, and I suggest just jumping in at whatever level you can afford, and see how it goes. Then you adjust over time.

Kellios Mac wrote:

Do you use lights for chicks to stay warm? If so, is there a good type you'd recommend?

I used a regular red heat lamp bulb screwed into a shop light. I think both cost me under $10 and I got them at the hardware store. See picture for example of what I'm talking about. The red glass and thus red light of the bulb is less likely to mess with their circadian rhythm. A source of heat for chicks is really important as they're unable to regulate their body temperatures for several weeks. Like Heather mentioned, it's good to have the heat source off in one corner or one end of a chick brooder so the chicks can warm up when they need to and then go to a cooler area to keep from getting too hot. Another note I'd like to mention is to put their water near the heat source so the water is lukewarm for the first two weeks or so. Newly hatched chicks drinking cold water can really lose a lot of their body heat which they'll then spend more time under a heat source warming back up.

Kellios Mac wrote:Thanks All for your feedback!

Another question that came up over coffee this morning...

Do you use lights for chicks to stay warm? If so, is there a good type you'd recommend?

I"m thinking of starting chicks inside my shed but it gets pretty cold here in Montana, I have some grow lights but am not sure if they would get too hot for the wee ones?

-K

As other mentioned, the standard red heat lamp is a great way to give them heat while they're still too young to tolerate the ambient temps.  HOWEVER, make sure you set it up in such a way as it's impossible for the lamp to fall into the wood chips/straw/whatever bedding.  We had chicks in a galvanized water trough in the attached garage.  The dog got out there and tried to hop in the water trough.   He knocked the heat lamp into the wood chips in the process.  Not exaggerating, in the 30 seconds it took to notice what was happening, get the dog out, and pick up the heat lamp the wood chips were already starting to char.  That was an eye opener.  My wife's cousin had his brooder/coop burn down when the heat lamp fell when they weren't home.  I forget how many chickens he lost in that fire, but it was several.  

My heat lamps are all tied with steel wire to a truss in the brooder building we use (there's a wire loop on the back of the lamp for this purpose).  If those heat lamps fall into the wood chips most likely the chicks are probably already goners anyway.  Only way that's happening is if a tree or something fell and smashed the brooder.  Or if a bear broke into the brooder.

Hi Stacy,

Thanks for your reply a few weeks ago.

Which breeds have you had good success raising? How long do you keep them under the Brinsea before moving them into the coop?

Take care,
K

Hi Kellios,
I have 7 Barred Rock, 2 Easter Egger, and one unknown red hen that lays dark brown eggs. The Barred Rock are supposed to camouflage better against birds of prey, but we can't tell any of them apart, so if you want to name your hens, they may not be best. We got the Barred Rock first, so they stayed in the brooder for at least 6 weeks, but maybe 8 because we hadn't finished the coop yet. This last spring we got the Easter Eggers and the red hen, they stayed in the brooder for 8 weeks, and then in a dog crate in the coop for another couple weeks to introduce them to the rest of the flock. It works very well. We were nervous about introducing the new chicks to the coop but everything went well.