What All We Learned In Our First Year Of Owning Chickens | NEW CHICKEN GUIDE

Hello and welcome to my backyard, so I thought today would be a good time to make a video about

what

I

learned

in my

first

year

as a

chicken

owner, since spring is coming and a lot of people are going to start keeping

chicken

s. Chickens, especially for the

first

time, there is a lot to learn and I would say I

learned

a lot. I did all the research ahead of time, but I still learned a lot in that first

year

of being a chicken owner, so if

chickens

are your thing. or if chickens are completely new to you stay and I will tell you everything I have learned so far Elsa, do you want to come sit with me, come here Elsa decided she wanted to join, so first I would tell you to do as much research as you can. you can, but also go deeper knowing that you won't know everything and that there will be many things you will learn from keeping chickens.

There were so many things I thought about every time we went into this. I knew everything there was to know about having chickens and then we got them and there were so many things that surprised me, especially when it came to taking care of them. I feel like that happens when you get any kind of new animal. there's a learning curve and you can do all the research you want, but there will still be some things where you'll just have to jump in and do it and learn as you go. The second thing would be that you don't need a super expensive setup, is that nice?

But to get started with chickens, you don't really need the Mil Golpe you see on Instagram. In fact, I'm going to cut a clip now of

what

our Coupe configuration looks like. it's um so you can see how you can do it. I think we maybe spent um1$200 just on leftovers and stuff we got from friends, so this is the Chicken Co my husband built. We currently have it wrapped in a tarp because Winter is how we winterize our coupe. We live in Southeast Texas, so it's not very cold, so we don't have to go to extreme measures to winterize our Coupe, but in the summer it gets very, very hot. and under this tar let me come in and show you so you can see it's all chicken wire and chicken wire so all the CPE is chicken wire and chicken wire and it's right on the side of the house it gets pretty nasty in here It's because It's where the chickens live, so we have an old table that used to be a table that we cut in half and now it serves as a kind of step for them.

It becomes, like I said, quite unpleasant. I just go in and scrape it. to keep it clean um I did it yesterday and it's already disgusting again um and then we have his food and his water hanging here we have this door that we have fixed to keep the dog out the dogs will eat chicken eggs and then We had all the nest boxes here stacked up here but they don't really prefer to lie down in the CP, they chose a different spot so we put a nest box there so some of them will lie down here so we have this nest box that we created.

My husband cut down a milk crate and we put some grass in there and then some grass underneath because some of the chickens will lay under there, but it's a very simple setup, with all the wood. of the wood is scrap wood that we found so you can see it's nothing very fancy it's just a chicken. It's actually big enough that it can hold up to 25 birds, uh, possibly even more, our chickens don't stay. there they roam around the yard most of the day and then just go to the CP at night, so as you can see it doesn't need to be very fancy, it just needs to contain the chickens and keep the predators away. dry it and then make sure you know what is necessary for your climate.

Number three chickens can be quite fragile, so many times the chickens will simply get sick or simply die. A lot of times you will bring home a bunch of chicks and some A lot of them just won't make it and I know people who have never had this happen to them but I've actually met more people who have this happen too often something just happens. and they don't make it. Our respiratory systems tend to be quite fragile during the first few weeks of life, you can do everything right and sometimes they just die and illness can ensue.

We had two chickens that started sneezing one day and we tried to support their respiratory systems. and they still just didn't make it and it was sad but it happened so going into it knowing that you're going to have losses helps you mentally prepare for it, I mean you'll still stick to them because they're so cute and when you get good breeds They're sweet and then it's hard not to get them, you can't eat my earrings, no you can't have them, it's hard not to get attached to them and you're I'm going to get attached to them, but part of having chickens is that they're not going to last forever.

One way to prevent illness and death of your chicks is to make sure you don't overcrowd them. Just because a coupe or brooder says it can fit a certain number of chicks or hens, doesn't mean you should push it to the edge. If you have too many chickens in there you will stress them out and they will be more susceptible to disease, making them more likely to get sick and have long term problems, so don't overload them, always go on the lower end of what you can fit in your Coupe. Our coupe, like I said before, could fit more than um.

I think it was about 25 to 30 birds in size and um I would never put more than probably 20 at most because we have our chickens free range in our backyard. I think the most I would be comfortable having in our area would be 20 at most, but at least now at this point we have 13 hens and four chicks on the Bruder. The fifth thing I have learned is the Bruder plate over the heat lamp. Every time, if you don't know what a Brer dish is, imitate the heat of a Mother hen is a small dish that the chicks can stand under and they can warm their bodies that way, but my favorite way to raise chicks is, if you have chickens, let a mother hen raise them because it is much easier and it is The cutest thing is to see them follow their mother, but it is much more fun.

The only bad thing about letting a mom raise the chicks for you is that you can't go pick them up because she will get scared and peck you. um and it stresses her out so that's the only downside to letting a mother hen raise them is you don't get the hugs from the chicks and I say letting a mother hen is my favorite way to raise chicks but I currently have four chicks. at the Bruder right now because she wanted a certain breed, okay, she's getting restless. I'm going to sacrifice her. I wanted a certain breed and my friend had a few so I don't have a Brey chicken so I'm like yeah.

I'm going to get them and raise them myself, so here we are, so even though it's my favorite way, I'll end up raising chicks number six. Just because you have all the chickens doesn't mean it's going to be quiet. The chickens are noisy. The chickens are noisy. and they make all kinds of noises, which is another thing I didn't know about chickens, is that they make all kinds of different noises, not just the little clucking and not just the cackling, they make some interesting noises, the egg song always she is funny. especially when you have several chickens and four of them are singing the egg song at the same time because they see something in the nest.

Dust bathing was also something I knew chickens did and I actually see one doing it. I'm not sure I can catch it on camera at this point, but that's how chickens clean their feathers, they go and lie down in the dust and dirt and kick up the dirt to clean their feathers, I guess. I just assumed that they were like other birds where they and they do prick themselves with their feathers and things like that, but the fact that just like a dog they will just roll around in the dirt and kick dirt to clean their feathers.

The first time I saw them doing it, I thought, What the hell is going on? Were they dying? No, they were just dust. The following is more advice than something I learned. I made sure I had an emergency chicken. kit on hand um in our chicken emergency kit, I have some extra antibiotics, um, because we've had chickens that go away when the chickens get sick, they go downhill very, very quickly and you may not have someone local that has antibiotics you may need. with chickens with your chickens so having some antibiotics on hand are not very expensive just having them in a kit is useful, you may never need them but if you do they are useful to have, I also keep a bottle of vet RX which is kind of like vix for chickens a little bit of B12 and then a little bit of nutr drench which is a vitamin supplement so anytime my chickens look chunky or it's really hot and I know it's going to be harder on their bodies, I will.

I'll put extra vitamins in the water and keep an eye out for any of them with colds. I start because the chickens will get colds when they sneeze and all that, then I will put the vet RX in their beaks and under their wings and in their Wadd Waddles and combs they are fine, so next thing I didn't know um chickens mol I had never heard about molting. I feel like maybe I had heard about the molt, but I don't think maybe they just forgot, but they will lose everything. of their feathers once a year and it was very strange the first time it happened.

I only had one of my Mt chickens this year because they usually don't start Mt until they're at least 18 months old, but one of them I guess just moved in early and she looked really funny, a little scary, but it was like six weeks and she lost the feathers on her neck and some along her legs because she is a chicken with feather legs and then they all grew back. and it was okay, but it was very strange, which brings me to the next thing I didn't know is that chickens will stop laying eggs for various reasons, they will stop laying eggs every time they are molting, they will stop laying eggs if they are actually laid sick, if it's too cold, if it's too hot, they will decrease egg production, when they become broody, when they want to have babies, they will stop laying for the entire time they are broody and the entire time they have babies and there are several reasons. which is why chickens just stop laying eggs, so it's always good to have different ages and ranges in your flock so you can have eggs constantly, the various noises of the chickens, this was something that I didn't realize they made all kinds of noises, um, so I already mentioned it once, but for your listening pleasure, here's a sample of various chicken and rooster noises, so most of the time roosters are just bad, they're really difficult to listen to. tame and if you have a good rooster you usually won't get along very well with him because he is protecting the flock and so he thinks he needs to protect his SW from you.

I've heard that once they pass teenage puberty. stage where they are a little better and we still have to get over the fact that we always end up shipping them, we intentionally got a rooster the first time and had problems with it and then every other time we end up with accidental roosters and every time I think, let's try see if we can tame it and every time it comes back it means we currently have two chicks that are with mom right now and they are both roosters so we are going to try to tame one of them.

With them we are going to stick with the one that seems to be doing the best. , but I've already made peace with them, they probably won't end up staying, if they turn bad, because roosters are very difficult to tame and chickens Broody, so I did it. I don't know that the chickens just became Broody. I mean, I guess I assumed they would have babies, but the whole process is that they will go into their nest and they won't come out except to eat and drink and maybe take a dust bath from time to time, but that's it and they don't lay eggs and You can't take them out of the nest unless you give them babies.

I've heard of people who like to soak them in water or put them in a cage. no bedding or anything on the bottom because they say the goal is to cool the bottom of their butt so that way they stop being Broody um I haven't tried it I've only had one Broody, no I've had two Broody chickens um and then our Broody hen last year we gave her chicks and she um was one of the ones that just didn't take care of herself very well um and she got sick. I learned when chickens get broody and they don't take care of themselves very well, so you want to make sure that you increase their vitamin intake and, uh, make sure that they get out of the nest and eat and go, you know, get water, otherwise they will get sick.

She passed away last year and then I don't know if you can see her. She currently she is there. That's our other hen that turned Broody and right before that big freeze we had, she turned Broody and we gave her babies and she kept them. alive and she did very well with them, so we just gave them babies every time they went. Broody breeds, so different breeds of chickens have different personalities, different egg colors, different egg sizes, and they lay a different number of eggs each year. I didn't know there were any. There are so many things that are different in different breeds of chickens, so depending on you, you know what color egg you want or how often you want eggs or do you want a really sweet chicken or do you want a really fun quirky chicken or achicken that will just stay. far you know there are different breeds that you can get and they will all have different personalities uh my personal favorite is the sex links because they lay big eggs and there are a lot of them and they are cute but they are so fun they have the best personalities.

You are very curious, they will let you hug them, they are very friendly with children, um, unless you let them run out of food and then they will chase you and peck you to let you know that they are short of food, you almost always will, unless you get chickens linked to sex, you will almost always get a rooster, it just happens that you have to hope that you will get some surprise roosters mixed in there. Sexlink chickens are easy to tell the difference because when they are born, they have a different coloration and they are droopy, also some of them will have, trying to remember the breed, I don't remember, I will put it here, they will have a spot on their head and the others, believe. males have a spot and females don't, things like that, that's how you can tell, but that's only for chickens tied to a specific sex, so there are a lot of chickens that you just don't know about and you just have to know. risk, so the chickens we have in the brooder currently are our frizzles and a turkin and those are all Barnyard mixes, so we're just hoping to get a hen out of them, we'll see, but if you get a rooster.

The good thing is you can almost always get rid of them on Craigslist, you post them on Craigs List and then in one day I have always been able to get rid of the roosters, no big deal, I don't ask questions about where they go and what's going to happen to them because at that point it's none of my business and last but not least, if you buy chickens because you think, "I'll get free eggs," you probably won't save any money. um, the cost of feeding the chickens is pretty high, we even buy local feed at our local feed store, um, it's made about two hours away from here, but it's cheaper to do it that way and even then we probably spend between 25 and 30 dollars. in feed every month um, now I offset most of its cost by selling the eggs.

I sell people to friends and family, you know people from my church, so I will sell their eggs and I don't make any money from my chickens. My chickens only pay for their own feed, so you can save money by selling your eggs, but if you just think you're going to get chickens and then end up having free eggs, you need to keep that in mind. I have to pay to feed these chickens, so that's pretty much all I've learned in this first year of keeping chickens. It has been incredible and at times heartbreaking. I think for the first few months I had these thoughts about what he did.

I get into that maybe this was a big mistake, but once we got past this time, it seemed like my chickens kept getting sick or something was wrong and we figured out what we were doing wrong and figured out how to do it right. It became a very pleasant experience and I love having chickens now. If you have any questions that I may not have answered and you want to ask them, feel free to leave them in the comments, you never know who may have the same question as you. and I always like to try to help in any way I can, if you like this video, please consider following and subscribing to me.

I do a lot of housework and homeschooling and things like that type of content on my channel and I would love for you to stick around. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week and until next time, bye.