Beginners Guide To Raising BACKYARD CHICKENS

Hi, I'm Jamie from Guildbrook Farm. If you're watching this video, you're probably interested in adding some

chickens

to your house,

backyard

, farm, or farm, and you'll probably have a ton of questions about how to get them. I started with

chickens

. I'll go over it in the next video. I'm going to show you everything we do from the beginning, from ordering chickens to transitioning outside, so the first thing you'll want to ask. you yourself is why you want chickens it is for eggs it is for meat it has a dual purpose for self-sustainability or it is for pets because depending on what the reason for acquiring chickens is will determine what type of breed you want people ask me what type of chicken is best for me yes I live in an urban development and yes I have a lot of neighbors but I want a couple of eggs well in that situation I would say go with the silky if you have small children and you have an urban house a very small area you want to have really calm chickens uh cute and small and fluffy ones that lay pretty well um I would go with a silky one so it's a great bird so they're really super quiet and they're great for keeping in an enclosed area, but if you say you live on a couple of acres and you want a free range and you're looking for something for eggs and dual purpose, I would choose a much larger bird, I would choose something that is better for egg production um, I would choose something, um, maybe like a black australorp or maybe a buff orpington. um if you're looking for something strictly for egg production, you might want to go with something more like a red sex link, um or a white leg. horn, they are very high producing or if you are just looking for a meat bird you may want to go for something like a Cornish cross where you just order a bunch of birds, breed them over the summer and then call them. all at the end of the year, if you like more, say, more self sustaining meat or more traditional breeds, you might want to consider something like a dorking, which is a very traditional breed and is more of a slow growing chicken that will have better flavor, but they will take a long time to reproduce or, if you are looking for something more traditional that grows faster, you may want to look at something like a Rainbow Ranger, so there are a lot of different ones. chickens, there are a ton of different options depending on your needs for us, we have a ton of reasons why we want chickens, we started out wanting chickens specifically for eggs and we wanted colored eggs, we wanted rainbow eggs so we ordered a ton of layers of rainbow and Now that we are going down the self-sustainable path, we want to get into something more like a traditional breed with better flavor quality and we also want to go with something that has a dual purpose, so we are getting into a type of chicken that is called dorking that I just mentioned, so we are breeding dorkings, but we are still continuing to add some of the light rainbow colored egg layers to our flock because we want to maintain the egg laying ability of all the colored layers we have on the market. "For the rainbow eggs, but we also want to have the self-sustaining dorkings.

Now those are going to lay fewer eggs, but they are a dual-purpose bird. They could lay three eggs a week, but they will have better quality meat, so " Here We are compensating with different breeds, so the first thing you need to do is figure out why you want chickens to research your breeds and then narrow it down to a handful of breeds that you think you might want to add to your farm. Hello, the second thing you need to know is where you are going to order your chickens. You can order them from online breeders. You can go pick them up at a breeder.

You can find a local breeder or you can just go say Craigslist and pick them up or even another local farm that you know that also raises chickens. Now there are pros and cons for all of us who have only ordered from online breeders. The main hatchery we order our chickens from is my pet chicken. We have had an excellent experience with them. Any problem we have had, they have completely resolved and we love working with that company. Another cattery we worked with was the McMurray cattery. mcmurray sent our ducks and our geese. for us and we also had a great experience with them.

Now when he places an order with a hatchery, he has the option to vaccinate his chicks. We choose not to vaccinate our chicks, but just so you know, that is something that an online breeder or even a drive up to the breeder would be willing to do, but it is very likely that a local breeder would not do something like that. Merrick is a disease that they can get vaccinated against if they think they might want to vaccinate their chicks, that's something they are willing to do. We're going to want to investigate, like I said, we don't vaccinate our chicks at the moment, we just don't think it's necessary, we don't think it's useful or beneficial at all to do so, so it's something we don't do.

You should research Merrick's disease and whether or not you want to vaccinate your chicks, just as a side note, they don't normally vaccinate bantam chickens. A bantam chicken is a miniature chicken, so a silkie would be a bantam chicken, it is a smaller chicken. and they don't do it, they don't vaccinate those types of chickens. Another place to order your chickens is through a local breeder. You can do some research online for the specific breed you want. Now the problem with ordering from a local breeder is that they may only carry one, two or three types of chickens, whereas if you order from an online breeder you will usually have a variety of chicken options to order from, but if You go to a local breeder, they may only carry two, three, or four different types. of breeds, they may not have the breed you want, so you could end up driving to a bunch of different breeders trying to collect the different chickens you want, assuming you want more than one breed.

The benefits of going to a local breeder is that your chickens are not mailed because that can be a little difficult on the chickens, so you tend to end up getting chickens that are in better condition when you go to a local breeder and also you can establish a relationship with that breeder. and you can potentially come back to them for more information. Another place to get chickens is craigslist. You can certainly search craigslist and find tons of chickens being given away or sold at very, very low prices. If you are looking for chickens on sale, you can certainly do it.

Go to Craigslist and you can also find legitimate catteries or legitimate breeders. You just need to do your research on that particular farm that is being sold, but you can also have a lot of problems with Craigslist, usually people selling chickens. On Craigslist they are usually advertising their farm, which is good, or they are trying to get rid of a problem, which is bad. Also, if you order from Craigslist, make sure the place you get it from is NPIP certified. that means a national poultry improvement program, that means they are in a certified program where their chickens are generally disease free.

If you bring home a particular chicken from Craigslist, particularly those that are not day-old chicks, those that are older, it is very possible that you could be introducing a disease to your location or your current flock, something that should Keep in mind: the last place you can get chickens is maybe a neighbor who is

raising

chickens, maybe he has a rooster and a group of chickens you can take some eggs from them and take them out if you have an incubator or you can just get some chicks from them and it's Same with Craigslist, just make sure you know who they are, how they raise their chickens, and how they take care of them. of them and if you feel good about receiving them from that person, then you can do it again.

There is a benefit to having an established relationship with that person, but there are drawbacks, you just have to make sure you are aware of them. what you're getting into, you know that person very well, so again, you're not introducing diseases into your land or your current block, if you have one, look at this here, this is called egg tooth. Chickens are born with that small tooth. There is something that helps them hatch from the egg and they will lose it after a couple of days and she is sweet. When you go to order chickens, you may notice that you can order roosters, hens or directly, now roosters and hens are sexed chickens, that means.

They have a specialist who looks inside the chicken's vent and can tell if it's male or female. A direct test means they didn't sex the chicken and you don't know what you're going to get, it's usually 60 percent bantam. 40 hens, so the benefits of saying a hatchery rather than a local breeder is that they usually have people on staff who will sex the chickens at a typical hatchery, local breeders don't usually do that, it's very very rare to find a local breeder. The breeder who will sex the chicken and also the hatcheries tend to guarantee the sex of the chicken when he places an order through them.

Some chickens are auto-sex chickens, meaning they can distinguish between males and females depending on their color. It comes out one color, it's a male, it comes out another color, it's a female, idiotic chicken, which is one I'm holding here, it's a kind of automatic sex, like you can tell which one is male, which one is female, this one here. It's probably the female because she has a darker head and I'm going to show you the difference with the male who has a slightly lighter head. This one here is probably the male. You can see that there are no black stripes on both sides of the head.

Well, the brown one and the females have a more defined stripe there, so this is probably the male, but when we order these chickens, we order one male and three females, so we know that one of them is a male and that is one of The benefits of ordering from a breeder is that they can guarantee that you will get what you order and like I said, if you go to a local breeder, you will end up with a lot of roosters and you will need to have a plan for those roosters when they grow up, the following What you need to know is when you want your chickens to arrive.

Now you need to consider the fact that your chickens will probably be or should be indoors for a long time. at least four weeks before you take them outside and when you take them outside, it should be somewhere in the range of about 75 degrees, so wherever your area is, wherever you're located, you want to make sure the temperature is appropriate. 75 80 degrees when you take your chickens outside, otherwise you will have to provide us with additional heat. We like our chickens to arrive sometime around April. A lot of people like them around April because it's Easter time and you have little peeps and it's fun for the kids, the thing is if you order a variety of different breeds or if you order a special breed in a particular traditional breed, if you wait until March to order those April chickens, you will be very disappointed.

You will find that most of them are out of stock. The time to start thinking about ordering chickens is in November of the previous November, if you want them in April, start thinking about ordering chickens during the holidays of the following year, because they sell out. In particular, rarer breeds will sell out, which is why we always order our chickens. If we order from an online cattery around November we will now place our order around November and then get a selection of different dates they can arrive we choose which date is most convenient for us you need to make sure you will be home on that date or that week of that date because you don't know when they're going to arrive you really know when They're going to ship, but they could arrive the next day.

They could arrive two or three days later. You want to make sure that your schedule is clear, that you can go pick up those birds at any time of the day and that you are ready for them, so make sure that your schedule is clear that week and you will choose the correct week on the day that ship, at least when it comes to my pet chicken, you will receive an email saying your chicken has been shipped and I will have a tracking number. Completely ignore the tracking number because it is completely and totally useless. All of your chickens will be shipped via the US Postal Service and tracking numbers are almost never updated in a timely manner.

In fact, it will tell you that these. They will ship overnight and you will very rarely receive them the next day. They could arrive the next day. They could arrive two days later. They could take up to three days. Chickens last approximately three days maximum in the mail. They live. of the yolk that they had in the egg and they will survive up to three days, but it starts to get a little rough after three days and you start to increase the chances of having dead chicks or suckled chicks the longer it goes on. So what I will do the day my chickens are shipped, I will call the post office or stop by the local post office and let them know that I have chickens that will be arriving in the mail and I would like them to call me as soon as they arrive and I specifically say that and I prefer to go to the post office and talk to someone face to face and write down my name and my address and that I have chickens and please call me immediately and my phone number, otherwise many times they will let those chickens They stay back there and if you don't receive a mail delivery until five o'clock, sometimes they just upload themto the mail truck and they deliver them at five to your house, those chickens sitting there at the post office all day and again that increases If you have a chance of having dead chicks, you're going to want to go pick them up, so make sure the office The post office has your phone number and even if it is on the package, many times the post office will say as long as it is there. on the package we will call you, you must specifically say call me as soon as it arrives.

I don't want my chicks to be handed over to me. I want to go pick them up and they will do it and our post office is really Good that this has been our fourth delivery so far, so you have your reasons for buying your chickens, you have chosen your breeds and you have found a breeder or hatchery for place orders and have chosen a date for shipping. Your chickens are about to arrive, so the next thing you need to consider is where I'm going to house these chickens. There are a lot of different options. You can choose something you built or something manufactured.

You can reuse an old shed. we can have a barn, we'll show you what we have here, which is two moving coupes and two different versions of two moving poops that we have on our little one acre farm. The first one we built is made almost entirely of new material. materials what it is is a chicken coop that will house about 10 birds, 10 adult birds comfortably, it has a covered run that is covered with half inch chicken wire and has five nest boxes, this is what we initially used for our When we got our first batch of chickens, we moved them here to this particular coop when they were about four weeks old and then we just moved them around the yard every day or so to give them fresh grass and then at about eight weeks. old we added this premier one power grid around the outside and this grid comes with it doesn't come, but this grid uh we asked for a solar charger to go with it and uh, if you're interested in finding out more about this particular setup, I'll leave a link, but we added this electric fence around it and let the chickens run freely within the electric grid.

Now that we are adding to our flock, we built a second coupe. This coupe here is made almost entirely of recycled materials it's made from pallets and the only thing new is I think the roof and the wheels cost about 150 dollars most of that money is invested in the wheels which are very expensive. chicken coop that is designed specifically for laying hens, the only thing these chickens use is to sleep at night and lay eggs and they can go underneath to seek shelter from the rain when necessary, but most of their time will be spent in the future, these are two different versions of mobile coupes.

We use them now. We have our adult chickens here and we have some six-week-old bales that are growing here along with some ducks and a goose named Ed. We'll also leave some links to those videos if you're interested in them, but you'll have to consider what type of chicken coop or how you're going. to house your chickens and you should have it built long before your chickens arrive, you don't want to be running around trying to find shelter for your chickens, the day they get here, that's something you should consider, research what works for your area in particular, whether it is a mobile chicken coop. whether it's something stationary and something you're going to build yourself or something you're going to say off Craigslist or a neighbor or someone else and how you're going to do it when you're talking about predator protection you're your chicken coop, you need to know what kind of predators are out there. in your area for us around here, we have our biggest predator is actually red-tailed hawks and then it would be foxes, owls, raccoons and black snakes, now for terrestrial predators like raccoons. and um we foxes use the electric fence and the electric fence works very, very well to keep those predators out and I can tell you the foxes are passing through this chicken coop and that's how well it's working, in fact we heard one get attacked in In the middle of the night we saw one the other night next to our compost pile and then a week before that same one was next to our garden so he's exploring the place but so far he hasn't been able to get in with the electric fence .

It is very important that you take terrestrial predators into account whenever you build a chicken coop. There are now many other different options for burrowing terrestrial predators. If you have a permanent chicken coop you can dig into the ground and put some type of mesh in there so predators like a raccoon or a fox or something can't dig under a fence, that's another option if you have a permanent structure but for We, with a mobile coupe, the electric fence works very well now with aerial predators like owls and hawks. We opted for this particular system, which is basically a colored mason's line that is strung in a haphazard pattern along our course.

The idea here is to try to keep it no more than two feet apart, now the reason for this is because hawks when they dive, they dive at about a 45 degree angle and they don't like to dive into an area where They're going to get trapped, so when they see all that lined up there, they don't like to dive. On that, I can guarantee you that this works because we have had several hawk attacks, we lost a chicken to a hawk and as soon as we put up this mason line we haven't had a hawk attack yet, they have flown over them.

I've gotten close, but they haven't gotten into that mason line, so this works, it's a little bit of a pain every time you move the coop, you have to restrict that entire mason line, so when they're designing their coop. Be sure to consider aerial predators and terrestrial predators, next up are roots. Now there are a lot of different options for roots. We find that thicker boards tend to work better with chickens and we found that two-by-fours actually work fantastic. Now some people say that the edges need to be rounded. Some people like to use tree branches and that's fine if you want to do that, but for us the two by fours work absolutely great for our chickens, they fit comfortably in them and the reason we know it works is because we.

We had thinner ones in there before and we had the two by fours lining the walls and all the chickens moved to the two by four lag so we know they prefer that and they have since changed those old coops to the two by fours where they the chickens lay. in those now and they are very comfortable, so they work for adult chickens. I also work for babies because the baby likes to sleep outside, besides nest boxes, you can use almost any milk box, um, you can see that. We have ours designed in the chicken coop here and we've also designed it in the chicken coop here as long as it's one foot by one foot by one foot and it's in a dark area because chickens really like to be in a dark space and it has to be lined with something that can use hay, straw or pine shavings, they like any of those as long as it's a nice comfortable, nice dark area that will work perfectly for the chickens and any box will work just before they your chickens about to arrive, you need to have some type of brooder, we use an old one, this is a 105 quart plastic tub and we will use it to keep the chickens in it for about a week, you will need to have some type of brooder.

Now for us we use this eco friendly 20 shine. This is supposed to hold 20 chickens, but I would say it probably holds closer. Well I'm wearing it for 11 right now, I think that's overdoing it with the size of it all. This is a plate, a warming plate that acts like a mother hen and they can come in here and get nice and warm and they can come out whenever they want to cool down and this can be raised in three different notches to cool it down. the chickens will want 90-95 degrees the first week and then you will want to reduce the heat about 5 degrees each week thereafter so turning it up will reduce the heat, this works very very well so another option. of using something like the eco-friendly incandescent plate is to have one of these heat lamps.

This is what is most commonly seen when people raise chickens. What you can do is buy a light bulb to enter. We bought one. We bought one that has. It has a red color that prevents pecking, but what's even better than the red bulb is having an amphibious light that screws in here an amphibious heat lamp and what it is, it just puts out heat, it doesn't put out any light and the reason is that. it's better than having the red one is because, um, the amphibious light, um, because it has no light, it allows the chickens to rest and sleep at night.

Can you imagine trying to sleep with a light on all the time we have? We haven't used this yet, we tried using it and the chickens prefer the heat plate much more so I would recommend if you can afford it and if you think you'll like the chickens, invest in the eco glow or something similar. There are a couple different brands, we think this is a much better product than something like this, but it's also good in case of emergency. Another thing I should point out with these lamps is that these clamps are not very stable. and they have been known to fall, crack, and catch on fire, so something to keep in mind, make sure they are very well secured now if you are using something like this, while with the eco-friendly glitter lift it up. in the different notches to cool it with one of these lamps, you must place it on a kind of chain where you can raise or lower it to heat or cool it and you can tell if the chicks are comfortable if they are all huddled under the lamp forming a ball and they do not come out , then they're cold, you're going to want to turn the lamp down a little bit and if you find that they're, you know, too far away from the lamp. and huddle in a room somewhere trying to get away from the light, then they're too hot too, so you'll want to pick it up and if you find that they're a little spread out like ours are here. then they get comfortable, they sink when they're cold, they come out to cool off and then they get comfortable, that's what you want.

The other thing you'll probably want to get a week or so before your chickens arrive is some type of chick. starter now you want to make sure it is chick starter because it has a higher protein content than, for example, a grower feed or a layer feed. In addition, it has different minerals than a layer feed or a growing feed. Now there are many different brands. of starter for chicks, but there are two different types, one is medicated and one is non-medicated, the medicated is to help prevent coccidiosis and contains medications to help prevent what is a common condition in chicks whenever they are exposed. outdoors in your soil and then there is the non-medicated which is a more natural approach that you will want to take to determine what is best for your situation, for us we went with the non-medicated which we don't like.

Medicate unless absolutely necessary, that's just our personal philosophy when it comes to us and our animals, but we are okay with medicating when necessary, but for us we opt for a non-medicated organic starter feed, there is no particular reason to be organic, apart from the fact that it is completely natural. we like a brand called new country organics works really well for us and when we switch to producer feed and then to layer feed we go to a local feed mill and they make a non gmo feed that we use for the starter we choose a starter organic from the new country, so while you are collecting feed and supplies for the chickens, another thing you will want to collect is some type of electrolytes for your chicks.

Now what are you going to do? Going to do this will give your chicks some energy. It's basically like Gatorade for chicks. These guys have been in particular if they come by mail. They have been in a box for between one and three days. They tend to be dehydrated, this will help cheer them up and get them off to a good start. Now there are a couple of different recipes on how to make it yourself. They usually come in packs of three for about two dollars. Honestly, you're not saving much money. doing it yourself and this is already formulated specifically for baby chicks so I would personally choose this, it's much easier to keep them.

They are also very good for chickens that become dehydrated in the summer, so I keep a couple of these around. On the other hand, it's like pedialyte or Gatorade for your chickens. One of these small packets will produce one gallon of water. What I usually do is buy one of these quart jars and I'll put about a quarter packet in it on the day that If you know my chicks are about to arrive, I'll put about a quarter packet in it and then fill the jar with water at room temperature. You don't want to use hot water and you don't want to use cold water because you don't want to burn your chicks and you don't want to cool them down.

Remember they want to stay warm so I'll have this ready whenmy chicks arrive. Another thing you'll want to have on hand. It is apple cider vinegar, I personally put a splash of this in all my animals' feed, this provides some potassium and some energy for the chicks, it is also good as an antiviral, antifungal, it helps prevent parasites, I put just a little vinegar in this jar and then For the rest of their lives I will continue to put apple cider vinegar in the water and I think it works and really helps the chicks so for me I use the Bragg organic brand.

I'm not 100 for organic at all, it turns out that's the brand I get it, as long as it's raw apple, apple cider vinegar should be fine, then you'll get the email your chicks sent, now it's time to set up your brooder, get your brooder box and again we use just use this plastic box which is about 105 quarts you want something small enough that they won't get lost in it and you want it to be easy to clean so that's why we use the brooder tub plastic, place your brooder in it, we put a board to fix the water.

We don't fill the water yet and we put two small containers for their food and all we're using here is a little lid just something small don't put your food in yet we put about an inch of pine shavings in the bottom now some people use newspaper some people use paper towels I don't like to use them because especially with newspaper the birds are going to poop a lot and the poop is slippery and what can happen is that they can Little legs can slip and if they slip and you make a kind of split, they can get something called a split leg, basically their legs come out of a joint and they can actually become deformed if it's not corrected right away because we don't.

I want them to have paw problems, we use pine shavings. The only downside to pine shavings. Some people say that sometimes birds can get confused about what is their food and what is pine shavings, but as you can see, our birds don't have any problems. Figure out what the food is because I'll just go and show them this is the food and then they'll come and peck at it to see if they know what food is okay now, assuming their chickens arrive in the mail. You will receive a phone call letting you know that your chickens have arrived or perhaps your breeder will call you and say, "Your chickens are ready, come pick them up today." The first thing I do is plug in my brooder.

Whether it's an eco-glow or a lamp, you'll want the chicks to be as nice and warm when they arrive. I fill their water container with the electrolyte solution and a splash of vinegar and put the food in them. on the small caps now, depending on how many chicks you have, you might want to just have one of these if you only have, say, a handful of chicks or we have 11 here, so we put two small caps here, you'll know if they're fighting for the food or not, how many do you need? I prepare all of this before they arrive Now, if you are ordering your chicks to be mailed, the chicks will last up to three days in the mail, hopefully, depending on how well they are doing.

We have generally had very good luck the four times we have ordered chickens by mail, we only had one problem and unfortunately we had to call that chicken back but the company took care of it. The problem is they refunded us, they actually replaced it with another chicken, um, and everything was fine. My pet chicken took very good care of us with that particular incident, but chickens can generally last up to three days in the mail as soon as you receive them. at home, you'll want to unpack them one at a time, examine them, make sure they're okay, their legs are okay, their wings are okay, and you'll want to take them and you'll want to dip their bills in water and I'll show you how to do it, so when you take them out out of the box you want to hold them very gently, they are very fragile and you want to take their beaks off and you dip it in the water and you see that you are drinking, you want to make sure that they take that first drink and if you want you can show them where the food is and, Generally, if one picks it up with food, everyone will, but you definitely want to dip all their bills in the water and make sure everyone takes that first drink.

It's very, very important that you take that first drink. Once they start eating, they should continue eating, so don't feed them in the car. on the way, if you have like an hour drive home, don't feed them in the car and then don't give them anything until they get home, make sure you wait until you get home, give them some water, give them the food and then make sure they have access to water and food at all times after that after that initial watering and feeding okay so after your chickens arrive you're going to want to make sure your chickens are okay make sure Make sure their wings are okay, make sure they are eating and drinking.

They sleep well all the time and are nice and warm and not too hot or too cold and if there is a problem you will want to contact your breeder and tell them what the problem is. The thing to keep in mind is that particularly if you are ordering by mail it is very possible that when you open the box it may have dead chickens in it, that is something you need to prepare for and you need to know what to do. In that case, and worse than that, I would say that if you open a box and find a deformed chicken or one that is so damaged that you need to call it if you are interested in learning a little more about that, we will have a video when things go wrong with the chickens, we'll link it above and in that particular case, something happened to us, I know the company took care of us as far as the refund and or as far as replacing the chicken, but we still had to deal with the consequences of having a deformed chicken and We explain what happened in that particular case, that's something you'll want to prepare for when you order chickens, whether through a breeder or by mail order, something like that can happen and you need to know how to deal with it in that particular situation, so that after your chickens are home, assuming everything is fine, one thing you should be aware of and watch out for is something called doughy butt, doughy butt occurs every time your chicks when the poop sticks to the little one lint around their vent and what can happen is it can act as a kind of cork or stopper and it can prevent them from excreting and if that happens they will die so one thing you should do and monitor over the next week in particular, that is probably the most crucial or critical moment, is that you have to pick each one of those chicks, oops, and without trying, you want to pick each one! of those chicks and you want to check their vent and make sure there's no droppings stuck in there if that happens you're going to need to clean it out and the only thing you don't want to do is take that and pick it up. because you might actually remove the skin when you do it so you want to take a Q-tip and maybe a warm washcloth and you want to sweat it and rub it slowly, don't pull, don't tear and you want to try. and remove that droppings from their fur very, very gently until it's all gone and the chicks won't be very happy about that, but you should try to remove it and what some people like to do is not put Vaseline on. ventilation but around the fur and that helps prevent future excrement from sticking to the fur.

You can do it as an option. The other thing you'll want to make sure you take care of at all times is to make sure they are clean. water you can see the birds have already pooped in this water and it hasn't been long so we're going to take this outside and throw it in and we're going to refresh the water that's another thing you want make sure you do that at all times and anytime also when you see them scraping pine shavings into their food make sure you select that we want to try and make sure they eat as little of them as possible okay so these little guys are four days old and as you can see they are very active, I replaced the little lids I had here with their food with the larger container because they figured out what their food was and were getting started. to scrape it all off, so this helps prevent them from scratching it and it is at this point that I start introducing them to some treats.

Now I don't give them treats before the third day. I want them to know what their food is first. and around day three or four is when I start introducing treats. Now, the treat I introduced is scrambled eggs. Some of you may think this is strange, but actually chickens live on eggs, when they are inside the egg, they live on eggs. yolk and actually this is really good for big chickens and it also provides a lot of protein and if you have a lot of eggs it's okay to give them to your big chickens. I usually mix it with a little bit of basil and a little bit of garlic and uh and actually, it helps prevent worms and also as a worm preventative, so around this time is when I start introducing treats like eggs and also in this time I start to train my birds with my voice.

I use a call where I use the noise choke. and I'm going to train these guys to listen to my voice when my big chickens are outside, particularly if we're moving the fence and they wander around the yard, if I call them they come running and that's what you want. You want your birds to be able to come running in case you need them, you know they need to come to you for whatever reason, maybe they're starting to cross the street or swerving or something, but when I make that voice, they know they treat you and they all They come running towards it, so I'm going to start training these birds with choke chip.

It will take them a little time to understand it. You have to do this repeatedly over and over again and every time you do it, you will want to give. They are given a gift and then they learn it. Also, these guys haven't had eight scrambled eggs before, so it's going to take a little while until someone pecks at them and figures out what it is, but once they understand what these guys are. I'm going to go crazy for scrambled eggs, so I'll show you what I do. I put a little bit in my hand. Now you want to make sure they are room temperature or cold.

No, they didn't teach me. I'm going to break them into little pieces. and I will show you what I do they are curious there let's see them wipe their faces you will see that the birds do that frequently they wipe their beaks trip when I have a gift when one receives it they normally scream and run and then others chase them like this, they gave You realize that's true, so you'll start to see if they do. They discovered what scrambled eggs are. This is the first time they have eaten scrambled eggs. Now I go. to do this again tonight and I'll probably do it twice a day and I'll do it as long as I do it I'll always put it in my hand so they get used to my hand too and um and soon before you.

You know, they're going to start picking the average treat and then we're going to start swapping it with different treats and they're all going to be confused because they're going to expect scrambled eggs and then they're going to get something like cucumbers and say what the heck and that's going to be the same thing, someone's going to come over. and they'll try it a little bit, they'll realize that, hey, this is a good thing and then they'll all come in and then I'll start to realize that this is how I train my birds. It usually starts on day three or four and I don't always give them treats twice a day, but for the first few days I'll just get them used to the chip chuck.

So probably for the next three days I'll do it twice a day and then I'll probably only do it maybe once a day and then maybe once every two days. These little ones are starting to run out of space. Look, they're starting to grow and I think it's time to do it. I think one of them just pooped in the water dish. Yes, it's time to move them to a bigger house. Well guys, as you can see, our hens are outgrowing their chicks. Brooder, we keep them in the small brooder upstairs, just to keep an eye on them for the first few days and we want to keep them in a small area so they get used to where their food is and where the water is.

Are already. starting to clear out, this is day five and we think they need more space so we're moving them here to our basement. Now let me show you the setup of our brooder. You just saw me put this together. What I have is a tarp here. the floor and the reason for that is because there are holes in the bottom of this box and when I'm going to move this whole mess outside, when the chickens are ready to be moved outside permanently and I'm going to clean up this mess, I don't want to have to remove shavings. of pine from the floor with a shovel, so first I put down a tarp and then you can see I use a watermelon box as a brooder.

I got this for free at a local Whole Foods. I called them and said: Hello, can you save? They gave me a box and, uh, and they did it. I have to thank Eric from Life in Farmland for this idea because he was the one who suggested using Gaylord boxes, that's what they're called for the brooder and I think it's a brilliant idea so we went for it. this is free from a local whole foods place and then I assembled it and filled it with pine shavings and then I want to show you this little setup here, so it's two plastic containers that come together with some great chicken wire on top, now We discovered this with our ducts because our ducts are extremely messy, they are throwing food and water everywhere, they are making a big mess.disaster and they were soaking the pine shavings, so we started using this for the ducks and we're going to continue using this.

For any of our babies, this should also help keep pine shavings out of the water and I'll show you how it's set up so we basically have a plastic container. You can see that there are two here inside another plastic container and the reason for this is that if the chickens or if you are

raising

ducks spill water in here, it is very easy to just take out the top container, rinse it and put it back without all the pine shavings collapse. Now, this right here was made by Jeremy and this is just a wooden pallet with a piece of chicken wire on top and you can see we put some duct tape on it, um just to help keep the chickens from getting cut and this just goes place on top.

I just think we have it backwards this is just a frame like this and we're going to put their food and water on top of here and that's going to keep them from throwing pine shavings into their food and water and then we just put some wrapping here the bird doesn't you should have trouble jumping on it, but in case we put up this little ramp and there's just a little block underneath to help hold it up and we just push all the pine shavings up now I'm We're going to lower the Brinsia brooder here and plug it in here and the We're going to go up one level because we're going into the second week and we want to decrease the heat by five degrees, so we want it to be around the 85 degree range, we're going to decrease it five degrees every week for four weeks until we get down to about 65 70. degrees and then we'll take the birds outside so I'll go up and grab our babies and I'll introduce them to their new brooder so you can see I raised the edge up a notch so it's a little cooler for them and as I put each one in I checked them to see if they were doughy, but and They're all really good right now and you'll notice that I just put them in different areas, put some on top and some on the bottom so they know they can come up here and they'll train each other on how to do it.

To do that, one thing I forgot to mention is that right now I start introducing sand every time you feed your chicks, you should start giving them sand now that the eggs are pretty easy to digest. Sometimes I give them sand with scrambled eggs that I haven't given them. Still for them, this is their first introduction to litter and I'll probably start giving them some other things, like maybe some chia seeds or something, but one thing they need to know is that whenever you start giving them food, I always want to give sand and I put a little plate here, don't be surprised if when you put something like this in they eat the whole container, they're not going to die from it, it's okay if they overeat it, um, it just goes away. pass through them and it's the same thing every time we're going to introduce soil in the next two weeks, they'll probably eat everything and you'll be scared that they're eating it, but it's okay so let's let these guys adapt and they seem to be doing well so far and will probably enjoy their new little space.

Oh, they're already running everywhere. You may have to plug these holes, although they are a little big for them. and I don't want them to come out so I'll probably put some kind of tape over these holes so they don't go through there, let's do that now oh hi oh hi oh hi no, there are no eggs there they're looking for eggs, that's funny, it's okay, I'm going to go give you scrambled eggs, so it's the beginning of the third week. You can see these guys are getting used to my calling when I bring them a small gift.

I wanted to go over some quick things about candy. You want to make sure you don't give them too many treats. You can see I only give them a small amount and a small cap. Each bird receives a very small percentage of food compared to what I give them. They go as far as normal chicken food and then up to what I give them. You know, I start with some scrambled eggs and then switch to things like cooked quinoa. I have some sprouts here. This is the first time I've been trying some tomatoes from the garden, sometimes when you give them something new they peck at it a little bit and they may not, they may not seem to like it at first, but you know, it's like a child little one who is trying. something for the first time sometimes it takes them a couple of times before they learn to enjoy something, we just want to make sure that you don't give them anything like dry seeds or dry beans or something, that dry rice is really bad, anything that is It's going to expand when it's wet, you want to make sure it's already cooked and when you give it to them or like beans or rice or something like that, make sure it's already cooked because obviously it can expand on them and stuff.

It will kill them if you do something like that. You also want to make sure you don't give them anything like old rice or white bread because there really is no nutrition in that. You have to make sure you are giving. them good nutrition good healthy healthy foods when you give them food just make sure what you give them is no more than five to ten percent of their diet I guess they like tomatoes okay she's fast she's got football oh tackles , we're figuring out tomatoes, you can see very quickly, they figure out what good food is, so lately these birds have been doing pretty well, but I started to notice that one of our birds, our favicana, was a little bit behind, looking a little listless, and I also started to notice. a lot of bloody diarrhea now what it looks like is some kind of ground hamburger in a puddle of water or foam and that worried me a little now something to keep in mind is that chickens in general get rid of the lining of their intestines it is very natural and appears as a small red patch sometimes in your stool.

You'll see it in both large chickens and chicks, but when you start seeing a lot of this ground hamburger that looks like something inside a little bit of diarrhea. especially if it is like frothy or clear diarrhea which could be an indicator of coccidiosis and after observing it for a couple of days, and noticing that one of my birds was acting a little listless, I decided to treat the birds, now coccidiosis is a parasite intestinal. That occurs naturally in the soil and groundwater and all birds are going to be exposed to it in one way or another.

Now, usually birds develop immunity to coccidiosis, but sometimes their immune systems get invaded and if that happens, then treatment is necessary. and what I use is the second time I have had coccidiosis in my little birds and what I use to treat it is something called chloride. This is the trade name for something called amprolium. Now what the improvised prolium does is that it prevents the absorption of b1 uh in the chickens and it prevents the absorption of b1 of vitamin b1 in the chickens so that coccidiosis does not have access to b1 so what you are going to do is add a teaspoon per gallon of water and you're going to treat the birds for a total of five days so what I did was I had a gallon jug here that I put a teaspoon of amprolium in, it's just a powder and then I added water to it to make sure which was well dissolved and I'm going to use that to fill her feeder for the next five days today is the first day I'm treating them, you can see our little one is a little perky, she's doing pretty well. and now he's eating a little bit, so that's a good sign, so when you have toxidiosis or specoxidosis in your herd you need to treat the whole herd because, well, it's very difficult to distinguish which one has uh, the oxidiosis and two. it's harder to treat this one and three if one has it, more than likely they all have it so you usually have to treat the entire flock, so I'm not talking about treating every bird I have on the property, I'm just going to treat those that are in this area generally the birds will develop immunity or antibodies against coccidiosis.

It usually takes time around week three. I start introducing a little bit of dirt into their breeder box and that usually adds up, it's just a little bit of dirt at a time that usually builds up immunity to some of the clock city horses but it looks like these guys were exposed to it a little earlier, possibly because only a group of us handled the outgoing birds and the larger incoming birds handled the soil and groundwater. and then coming here and handling the birds, they were probably exposed to this early on and it just invaded their system, that can happen, you just want to be aware of the situation and know what it looks like and just make sure you have some cord on the hand to treat it if necessary.

Also, since we're starting week three, we need to raise the brooder one notch, so I'm going to do that. Remember that you are going to reduce the heat by 5 degrees each week. Probably what bothers me the most is this particular brooder because it's very difficult to get these little clips off of the birds, so the brooder is up and these little guys, if you've noticed, are starting to grow wings. feathers and they're going a little crazy, I don't know if you notice, but they're jumping on top of the food dish, they're jumping on top of the water dish and it's not long before we'll be jumping on the side of this box, so I'll show you what we do.

We have built this cover that will go on top. It's basically just two, two-by-fours, and a half-inch hardware cloth that's stapled to the boards. We're just going to put it on top to keep these guys from escaping the coop, they're getting a little scared so there you have it, this will keep these guys from escaping the coop and I'll show you what happens over the next few days and we'll also keep an eye out for that little favicana and everyone else to make sure there is no more bloody diarrhea and that everyone is okay so these little ones can finish their five days of treatment for the quarry.

His poop looks pretty good, I haven't seen any bloody poop and today I started him on some b1 supplements. Now remember that coral prevents the absorption of b1, so now that we've removed it from your systems, we want to replace that, so what I do is give you some neutral moisture in the water and I'm going to do this with one or two containers full of water and then that's it because this stuff contains molasses and molasses tends to um give birds diarrhea and you know, just be careful how much you use this. I just use about one and a half full droppers in about a gallon of water and then I just fill that container twice and that's it.

You're done, whether your birds end up with coccidiosis or not. You want right now, around week three, week four, to start introducing them to the native soil, so what I like to do is put a little bit of soil in there. and I just understand that their bodies and their systems are used to the native soil, so what I have here are some cabbage plants that didn't grow in the garden, they're stunted, you can see there's a little bit of soil in the garden. there, so I'm going to put them there and I wouldn't be surprised if there's nothing left but a stem after a little bit of time.

You can see that they are very experienced in the pictures, but they are a little confused. As for what it is, we'll start packing it up and get used to it. You can also see that these guys are starting to dig holes. What they are trying to do is a dust bath now before they introduce a box of soil which I will do in the next few days. I want to make sure they are okay with the land, so I'll do it slowly. I'm going to let them digest this and then we'll introduce a little box of dirt for them to dust bathe in, uh later, later, I know they're okay, I see she's naughty, okay, these little ones are three and a half weeks old, can you see? how naughty they are, they're starting to get pretty agitated, uh, um. in particular, this is our olive egg that's ready to leave here, so I think they probably only have another one, they're three and a half weeks old, they only have another one, I'd say maybe four or five days before we move.

Take them to a secure coop because they are ready to go, but now we are going to put them in a dust bath box. You know I already mentioned that we've been getting them into the ground a little bit. We are ready to go ahead and place a box of dirt filled so they can dust bathe. Okay, for a dust bath box, I'm just going to use a cardboard box and we're going to cut it out now. It won't be big enough for all the birds to fit in, they'll probably all try to fit in there at once, but I have limited space, so we're just going to put a little box with dirt in there, so I'm going to cut it, I'm going to cut a little box like this and I'm going to put some native soil in now again.

It is very important to use native soil to make sure these birds get used to it. For coccidiosis that occurs naturally in the soil, you could also put some wood ash in there because wood ash helps them with dust bathing, that's how they stay clean, so I'll go get that and I'll come back right away and we'll see if these guys like it. Oh, you're naughty, so I went back inside with a little box of dirt I shoveled out of the garden and put in some wood ash. on top of that let's mix this together there's probably some worms and bugs here now again this is how chickens bathe this is for bathing powder helpskeeping the mites away its very important dust bathing chickens dont be surprised if they eat a lot of dirt they will probably get scared at first and then they will get the hang of it real quick ok see how you like it ok guys im going to move this and place it, so look at the ugg boots on this little Cochin.

Those are amazing so we're approaching week four here and another two or three days and these birds have to get out of my basement if you can smell through the camera exactly what I'm smelling in that basement. I would turn off the channel, it smells horrible and when it gets to that point and when the birds fly into their brooder, you know it's time for them to come out and I specifically chose this week to put the birds outside because even though it's June. We are having a cool week and by cool I mean 85 84 those type of temperatures and at night it will be above 60 degrees so it is a perfect time to get the birds outside and acclimatize them to the weather here now if your temperatures They will be below 60 degrees, you will have to put an external heat source outside for those birds, but since our temperatures are perfect, it is not too hot or too cold, it is a good temperature to take them outside, so right now I am going to Prepare our mobile outdoor chicken coop for these little babies, I'm going to put in some pine shavings.

I'm going to drizzle some sweet PDC. Sweet PDC is a deodorant that helps absorb ammonia odor. And then we're going to move them. Come out and see how they're doing now, the plan here is to lock them inside their chicken coop here and if you come here, this is our chicken coop so it's a chicken coop and a run and we're going to lock them inside here. For the first couple of days, this should ideally get them used to this being their home and should make it easier for them to know when we open the door and release them onto the grass area and when night comes. come back here for warm bedtime, if not we have to pick up each bird individually and put them here, so hopefully this will train them to come up here at night, we'll see how it goes now.

Put some pine shavings in our chicken coop. Now these flat boards here will only be used to store your food and water. Once they get used to going out, we'll put their food and water down there, but because I'm locking them in here I want a more stable place for their food and water, which is why we have the boards now. I'm going to sprinkle some sweet peas, this is like cat litter, it will help absorb the odors. and it's completely natural, so if they eat it, that's fine, so we have a little cardboard box that we'll use to transport them.

I'll probably only bring a couple here before they start flapping. we'll probably have to take them out in batches, you guys are ready so that's why you need to go outside to see if you're ready, okay yeah, I thought you guys were going to do that too, it won't get very far, everyone, come on. You're going to have to leave, you don't want to be stupid, come on, come on, they all look confused, we have to get them up so they have better ventilation, right, let's go see what the others are doing last. Come here idiot, you don't want to stay here alone, okay, go, go, come on, now, there they are, now we have to get them food and water, so we have apple cider vinegar water. and then I transfer their food to a rubber container, this will help prevent them from spilling it, the only thing is that they might poop in the container so I don't give them too much and just have to be careful. and there's sand too, so we're going to put this in there and we're going to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't end up too good, here you go, there's your water that's not very good, here's your food, they're getting comfortable pooping, okay, so these little guys are ready, we're going to keep an eye on their food and water again, we're going to keep them locked up here as long as the temperatures hold.

Okay, and they're not too hot or too cold, we'll keep them locked in here for the next two days, then we'll open the sliding door, let them down into the hallway, and move their food and water. After a few weeks, I would say probably when they're eight and nine weeks old, that's when we'll probably start to consider whether or not it's a good time to integrate them with a larger flock and bring them in. while we're trying to do that we'll see you in a couple of days when we let them out for a run so our little chickadees have been here for two nights and now we're keeping a close eye on them and making sure everyone was comfortable no one was too cold They've been doing great but let me show you what they've been doing these guys are ready to get out of here they've been digging the place scratching and scratching and they're ready to get out good so we're at the start of week four actually tomorrow It's the beginning of week 4 and these guys have been on starter feeding the entire time.

Starting tomorrow we will begin to integrate some food for producers. What do I do now? If I have a little bit of the starter feed left, I'm going to start mixing in some grower feed to transition and then once all the starter feeds are gone, they're just on grower feed, it's around week four. at week six. you can really start making the transition to producer feed. What you can do is look at the manufacturer's label on your starter feed and it will usually tell you when to start changing them, so for us it's about four weeks and what we use. for farmer feed we have a local feed mill that produces feed for non GMO farmers so that's what we're going to start feeding them well so what we're going to do now is Lift the door and we're going to let these guys explore grass and insects and I think what I'm going to do is keep their food on top so they still associate. the coop part with their house because honestly I don't want to have to pick up every one of these guys and put them to bed at night, so I hope they go there at night, but let's keep an eye on that and see if they come up the night, if they don't come up at night, we'll have to pick each one up and put them there, so we'll see how it goes, but right now this is going to be their first day on the grass and we'll see if they like releasing the krakens hello oh oh that's it okay so let's leave their food there so they think it's their home um and once they get there I used to go up there at bedtime then I bring their food here and every morning when I wake up I just I lift the door and then every night before I go to bed, when it gets dark, I go. close this door and make sure they are safely locked up, but this is where they will stay for the next, at least four weeks, we are not even going to consider integrating them with the larger birds there until they are at least eight weeks and then what we're going to do is take this entire chicken coop and put it inside the electric fence with the other guys and then have them integrate with each other through the mesh and then over a period of time, we have a little gate here that we'll open the little gate from the feeder that Jeremy built.

Let's open that door and let the birds explore at their own will if they want to come out. the bigger birds and then they could come back whenever they wanted without the big birds following them, so we will check back with you in a couple of weeks and see how these little ones are doing. We're actually about five and a half weeks in and our little birds are doing very, very well. You can see that they are in their own pen separate from the larger chickens. These guys are introducing each other through the fence so it's a sure way to introduce the big and small chickens and these guys have been putting themselves to bed because by keeping the food there for the first three days of food and water they knew that that was his home.

I opened the door, I didn't let them down and I let them go down on their own and they walked up the ramp and explored down here and then when it was time for bed, as soon as it got dark, they went back up themselves, that's definitely the way to do it later About three or four days, I put their food here and they still know to go to bed at night, so that's what we're doing. These guys are doing very well and that would probably be for the best. way to transition your chickens outdoors, so when these guys are probably about eight weeks old, that's when we'll open this door here, this feeder door, and that will allow just the chicks to come in and out and keep the bigger chickens. of going in and bothering them and then we'll see how that interaction goes and that's it so those are the basics to get started with your chicken flaw so I'm not an expert when it comes to raising chickens this is just my fourth batch in raising chickens and I just wanted to take them and show them what I did step by step.

If you currently raise chickens, I know you are the experts, please let me know what I missed. I'm curious. the underdogs and if you are new to raising chickens, what do you think? Do you think this is something you want to get into after seeing all this and seeing all this? I want to hear from you, please leave them below and if you have any questions please leave them below also if I can't answer them, I know a lot of other people can so this has been helpful for you. Like and subscribe and see you in tomorrow's video.

Thank you very much for seeing me. Basically, what they do is look inside their hole and they can tell by the different shapes there if it is a man or a woman. What do you want me to say? Look inside his hole. What is a vent? Yes, the time of the event. You're a bomb, I kind of lost track of what I was saying, where I was going with this, it was pine shavings and, um, hello, what was I saying, I can't help it, I just get completely lost, um, oh, that was diarrhea, did you hear that?

I wonder if the camera catches that. Is for? Oh, this will be one of those. If you like me more, I have a fucking knot on my face.