Starting Chickens off Right It’s that time. Your new chicks just arrived in the mail or hatched after a long and loving 21 days under the incubator. Now that the chicks are here, things don’t necessarily get easier. Instead, the care protocol shifts gears. Getting chicks off to a good start isn’t necessarily complicated. They have the same basic needs of any animal. However, you should pay extra attention to a few basic things. Brooding The brooding phase comes after the chicks hatch. The first 24 - 48 hours after hatch is perhaps the most critical stage. During this time they have to learn to fend for themselves by learning to eat and drink, stave off any potential illnesses, stay warm, and establish themselves in the pecking order of identical aged cohorts. Don’t fear, though. With good, sound management practices, your chickens will get off to a healthy start. Getting the right equipment To brood baby chickens you need some basic equipment. I start off with a spacious place to house the chicks. While you can use a big cardboard box, I use a six foot long livestock trough. The trough has high sides to keep the babies inside and is roomy enough to let the chicks move around to the area of the brooder box where they find the temperature comfortable. Furthermore, the trough has rounded edges and lacks corners. Often chicks, in an attempt to stay warm, will pile up in a corner and suffocate one another. Of course, I brood the chickens inside a shop or garden shed to protect them from predators and where I am better able to manage the temperature. Once I have my makeshift brooder house in place, all I need is a few more items including: Heat lamp
When starting out chickens, I use a 250 watt red heat bulb that’s mounted in a brooder lamp. The brooder lamp has a six foot long cord and a safety cage on the front. The long cord allows me to regulate how low or high I can hang the bulb. The height of the bulb in relation to the floor of the brooding box dictates how warm the air is under the bulb. In other words, the lower you hang the build in relation to the floor of the brooder, the more the heat is concentrated and the warmer the area becomes. I usually start the lamp about a foot off the brooder floor and see how the chicks react when the lamp is on. If they huddle tightly under the lamp, the lamp is too high and the chicks are cold. Therefore, move the lamp lower. Conversely, if the chicks are spread out away from the lamp, the lamp is too low and the chicks are trying to escape the heat. Ideally, the chicks will crowd against each other to stay warm but you don’t want them stacking on top of each other. If they do, it could lead to suffocation. Ideally, the temperature in the brooding area should be 95-100 degrees for the first two weeks of life. After that, you can reduce the heat 5 degrees each week until chicks are a month old. As they become fully feathered, you can wean them from the heat lamp all together. Ultimately the height of the heat lamp is dynamic and the ambient temperature of the room dictates how high the lamp should be. Therefore, be prepared to adjust the lamp height daily. Waterer Clean water is important for day old chicks and should be changed daily to ensure that it is clean and fresh. I use plastic chicken waterers I buy from a local
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