8 Beginner Chicken Care Mistakes To Avoid | Backyard Chickens 101 | Egg Laying Hens and Chicks

foreign [Music] hey guys welcome back to Oak Abode today I am going over the most common beginner chicken keeping mistakes that we come across we get lots of messages from people saying that something happened and asking how we can fix it and the best thing that I think I can do at this point is tell you guys what those mistakes are so that you can kind of prevent them from the beginning I want to give a big thank you to upside for sponsoring today's video it's been raining on and off so I hope you guys don't mind this weird lighting and the sound of rain in the background okay I'm gonna give you eight of the most common chicken keeping mistakes that we see but let me know in the comments if this was helpful for you and if you want to see more because I have a list of like 30 that I could go over mistake number one is having too many chickens for the space that you have for the chicken so this could be either too many chickens for the coop too many chickens pour the chicken run or too many chickens for the brooder if you are raising baby chicks I know everybody wants a hard and fast answer for how many chickens fit into X-Men's square feet in the coop or in the run some loggers will give you a number the truth is that there is no exact number it kind of depends on the chicken's personality it depends on your environment how much simulation they have whether they have time free ranging or not I think the general consensus is like three to four square feet for the run and like two to three square feet for the coop but again these are just kind of General estimations I always just say go with kind of what the Google search says and then add more space if you can because it's much more common for people to not have enough space for the chickens that they have as opposed to having too much space which is really pretty rare a lot more rare than people think same with the brooder if you are running low on space one thing you can do besides getting rid of chickens or adding more space one thing that you can do is just provide more stimulus so give them treats give them toys and especially if you can free range or let them out in like a protected yard to have more stimulus be able to Peck around a bit that's really good way to help fix the problem of having too many chickens for too little space number two another one of the common problems that we see is choosing the wrong feed so to be really specific the most common mistake in the feed realm I think is when people either get the starter grower mix for chicks and never switch over to a layer feed or they have a flock of grown-up hens and then they add chicks and the chicks who are not laying are eating the layer feed both of these can be a problem in their own way the main difference with layer feed as a as opposed to starter grower is that it has extra calcium and actually having too much calcium for the chicks can be a problem I have read at least on their little systems they don't have a way to expel the extra calcium because they're not laying eggs same goes for Roosters roosters eating the calcium fortified feed supposedly can cause problems for them long term so what we do to prevent this problem is if we have roosters or if we have chicks that are not laying eggs yet everybody gets the starter grower even the hens and then we provide extra calcium on the side my two favorite ways to add extra calcium are by feeding them back their eggshells you can crush them and bake them if you're worried about egg eating problems or if you're worried about kind of raw egg on the shelves that's not something that we do but you can do it and the other way that we love to give them extra calcium is with black soldier fly larva you guys know I've got so many messages from you guys who have tried it and loved it also they have more calcium than mealworms and the chickens just totally eat them up you can also add oyster shells that's not my favorite way to do it I do know it's a really common way to do it so another option basically just having improper feed or specifically a calcium imbalance is another really common problem that we see mainly in the form of soft or easily breaking eggshells people message us with that problem and this is a really good way to fix it whoops okay I guess that was my point number three so having the improper feed but also just forgetting calcium for your hens specifically so again the roosters and the baby chicks don't need it so much but the hens who are laying eggs they're expelling a lot of calcium in their eggshells so they need that extra calcium either in the form of layer feed or and or calcium supplements like I mentioned so we pretty much went over that point already like I mentioned today's video is sponsored by upside upside is one of those things that sounds too good to be true but I've used it it's totally legit and it's a no-brainer these days everyone's feeling the pain at the pump or at the grocery store and pretty much everyone's looking for ways to save some money or get a little cash back and that's where upside comes into play the app is incredibly easy to use what it does is it tells you businesses in the area that will offer cash back or cash rewards for submitting a receipt from their business to the upside app all you have to do is check in at the business and pay as usual with a credit or debit card then you scan your receipt in the app and you get rewards a lot of people love to use upside to get cash back for pumping gas which is something we're all doing anyway some something that I love using it for personally is discovering new businesses in the area to get started download the free upside app in the app store or in Google Play and use my promo code okabode for five dollars cash back on your first purchase of 10 or more in our house the rule is that when I earn a little more on cash back programs like this I get to use them on whatever seeds or plants I want in the spring so it is totally worth it number four another really common problem that we see or that we hear about is people being over protective or over controlling of their flock of chickens so a lot of people who get chickens who have had like only pets not like farmyard or barn animals their whole life they really want to control everything and they want to protect everybody and I totally get that I'm not talking overprotecting from predators that's not really possible in my opinion but over protecting them from each other or trying to Over Control the environment so this might look like trying too hard to keep certain breed separate from others because you're worried that they're too small and they won't be able to stand up for themselves or seeing that one hen gets pecked by another maybe when they're at the food dish and it runs away but it freaks them out and then they separate everybody and then they don't know what to do because when they try and reintroduce them then everybody fights even more there can definitely be bullying situations where you have to step in and you have to separate a chicken to save their life that absolutely can happen we have had that happen one time um ironically it happened because I believe we were being overprotective of them trying to keep them sheltered in the winter when really they just wanted to get outside in the cold they didn't care and then they got too cramped and one of the chickens got bullied to the point where we had to separate her pretty much permanently from The Bullying flock so uh another one is trying to protect them too much from the cold chickens are pretty darn Hardy they have a pecking order that they have to establish I'm talking outside of bullying or somebody's getting beat up it's okay in fact it's important to let them establish that pecking order it's also important to let them acclimate naturally to the weather so that's why we don't add supplemental heat in their Coop 99 of the time we want their systems to acclimate naturally because it would be dangerous for them to all of a sudden get shocked into cold weather if their heat Source went out and we didn't know about it so to summarize that point just in general being over protective overbearing of the chickens in terms of letting them work out their own issues that they can that's a really common problem that we see also and it causes a lot more problems in the flock and even health-wise for the chickens on the flip side my next point is that we see people not being protective enough it is so heartbreaking when a flock gets decimated by a predator Predators like coyotes raccoons minks when they get into the coop they can completely decimate the flock and a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that like a rooster will prevent against a dog or a coyote for the most part the rooster isn't going to stand a chance against an animal like that so maybe expecting too much of roosters and not adding enough protection on their own or just not protecting the coop enough a lot of people don't realize that chickens kind of like shut down at night when they Roost they become really really dumb and they won't necessarily have the wherewithal to see a predator and fly higher when they Roost they kind of go as high as they can and then they just kind of shut down I don't know why that is but that is why so many of the times a predator will get into an enclosure and just kill absolutely every chicken and it's so sad when that happens so long story short if you can do any protection against predators whether it's electric netting I'll link some for you below whether it's digging your fence into the ground to prevent Predators from digging underneath the fence making sure you have a really solid Coop there are a lot of different ways to do it I'll let you research those separately but that is another really common thing that we get messages about that people got chickens and that they all got eaten or killed old and that is very heartbreaking so prevent that problem if you can kind of on the note of enclosing The Coop another problem we see is when people enclose the coop too much I I know this sounds like I'm confusing you guys probably but a lot of people will especially in cold climates like ours were in Wisconsin trying to protect the chickens that will create like a totally airtight Coop not not to the point where they suffocate the chickens but one problem that this creates is that when it's cold the moisture cannot Escape From The Coop and the last thing that you want with chickens in the cold is to have a coop that is cold and moist if you're gonna have a cold Coop you want it to be cold and dry so we like to put our airflow at the very top of the coop we talk about this a lot I've also heard from a lot of people supposedly some that even live in Alaska and keep chickens in three-sided shelters they're not even totally enclosed that's not something I can vouch for personally but I have heard of people doing that and my understanding is that moisture or a wet floor wet air is a lot more dangerous to chickens in the cold than just cold dry air so we really like to have not a drafty Coop so we like to keep the air flow kind of higher up than where the chickens are if they want to stay out of the draft they can stay down low but you wouldn't believe how many people don't really do their research and just try and close everything up for the winter to try and keep everybody warm and I think that is one of the worst things that you can do in terms of keeping chickens comfortable and healthy in the winter so make sure that you have airflow in your Coop whether it's winter or whether you're just keeping them in other circumstances too you don't want that Coop to not have airflow I have two more points for you kind of on the note of temperature having chicks in the wrong temperature so if you don't have a Broody hen who is taking care of your chicks you're going to have to simulate the Broody hen chicks for the most part need some source of heat when you're raising them what we like to use is brooder plates so they use radiant heat more like a mama hen we don't use heat lamps the brooder plates are safer and they are more like a mama hen comforting for the chicks so I'll link those for you guys below I talk in other videos that I can link for you too about why we love the brooder plates but it is not enough to just take a brooder plate and put it with chicks that are like in 30 degrees outside I've had multiple people message me saying they lost all their chicks because they just put the brooder plate in and they thought that that would be enough there has to be a baseline temperature I wish I could tell you what it is I don't know for that reason we like to keep our chicks in kind of like generally indoor temperature uh at least 60 degrees plus the brooder plate if it were up to me I would probably keep it more like 70 but basically really avoiding any temperature extremes with chicks we like for them to be able to cool off a little bit so leave the brooder plate if they want to and then to also go back in and warm up another note kind of on the wrong temperature for chicks is having the if you choose a heat lamp this is another reason we don't like them sometimes people will just heat the whole enclosure with that heat lamp chicks can't escape and they get baked oh sun's really coming out uh another one we've seen is people will put the um kind of like a heating pad on the bottom of the chicken closure and again the chicks can't escape the heat they can get too hot and they pass away from that so just make sure you research the ideal chick enclosure these are all things we've had people message us with and say that they felt horrible about messing up and it's okay living you live and you'll learn but hopefully by watching this video or preventing it from happening at least a few more times finally the last thing I'll talk about is failing to treat illnesses early so if you see something wrong with your chick or your chicken don't wait make sure you start researching it right now and researching the fix a lot of chicken problems can be fixed at home so people message us with chicken illnesses all the time my answer is always the same take them to a vet I'm not a vet or talk to your local chicken group because I am just not an expert on all chicken illnesses my biggest recommendation is to join a chicken Forum whether it's backyardchickens.com or your local chicken Facebook group that way you can post a photo and people can give you local advice and also if you just kind of browse it you're going to learn a lot from what other people are doing that way too but long story short if you see something weird on your chicken's foot might be bumblefoot if you see something weird with their crop it could be sauerkraut it could be impacted crop anything pretty much that you're gonna have to treat in a chicken you're gonna have a better time treating it if you catch it early so just get on the internet and start researching if you can as soon as you notice something uh I I recommend against just kind of waiting to see if it goes away on its own sometimes it does but again we get a lot of messages from people who said I waited too long to do this with kind of the traditional way of approaching it so what do I do now again my answer is always take a note that if you can but um local chicken forums and chicken groups are probably the second best option so once again those are my first eight kind of beginner chicken mistakes that we would love to see more prevention of not that we haven't made our own mistakes too we definitely have but those are really common ones and if you found them helpful please let us know in the comments because I can make probably two or three more videos of beginner chicken mistakes to prevent uh that are generally easy to prevent thank you again upside for sponsoring today's video If you guys haven't already join us on Instagram our Instagram handle is Oak underscore Abode and don't forget to hit subscribe if you'd like to join us again in the future and please leave a comment with your recommendations against beginner chicken mistakes whether it's a mistake that you made or mistakes you've seen other people make everybody can learn from your experience too thanks for watching and we will see you next time

Channel: Oak Abode

Views: 347,921

Keywords: backyard chicken care, raising chickens for beginners, how to raise baby chicks, poultry housing, coop design, keeping livestock, suburban homestead, urban homesteading, self sufficiency, soft egg shells, collecting eggs, easter eggers, black copper marans, brooder ideas, best breeds, food for hens, laying hen, training roosters, protecting from predators, cold weather prep, pecking order, pet birds, tiny raptors, constructing covered run, building housing for pets

Id: gP_GdKTbRaw

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 10 2022