Beginners Guide To Raising BACKYARD CHICKENS

[Music] hi it's jamie from guildbrook farm if you're watching this video you're probably interested in adding some chickens to your house or your backyard or your homestead or your farm and you probably will have a whole bunch of questions as to how do you get started with chickens i'm going to go over that in this coming video i'm going to show you everything that we do from the very beginning from ordering chickens all the way up to transitioning them to outside so the first thing you want to ask yourself is why do you want chickens is it for eggs is it for meat is it dual purpose for self-sustainability or is it for pets because depending on what your reason is for getting chickens um will determine what kind of breed you want a lot of people ask me what kind of chicken should i get if i live in an urban development and if i have a lot of neighbors but i want a couple eggs well in that situation i would say go with the silky if you have little kids and you have an urban home a really small area you want to have really quiet chickens uh cute little fluffy ones that are laying pretty well um i would go with a silky so he's a great bird for that they're really super quiet and they're great for keeping in an enclosed area but if you are say living on a couple acres and you want a free range and you're looking for something for eggs and dual purpose i would go with a much larger bird i would go with something that is better on production for eggs um i would go for something um maybe like a black australorp or maybe a buff orpington um if you're looking for something for strictly egg production you might want to go with something more like a red sex link um or a white leg horn they're really high production ones or if you're going for just a meat bird you might want to go with something like a cornish cross where you just order a whole bunch of birds you raise them through the summer and then you call them all at the end of the year if you're more into say more self-sustainable meat or more heritage breeds you might want to look into something like a dorking which is a very heritage breed with it's more of a slow growing chicken that is going to have better flavor but it's going to take a really long time to breed those out or if you're looking for something more heritage that's quicker to grow out you might want to look into something like a rainbow ranger so there is a bunch of different chickens out there a bunch of different options depending on your needs for us we have a bunch of reasons that we want chickens we started off wanting chickens specifically for eggs and we wanted colored eggs we wanted rainbow eggs so we ordered a bunch of rainbow layers and now that we are kind of going down the self-sustainable path we want to go into something more of a heritage breed with with better quality of taste and we also want to go with something that's dual purpose so we're kind of getting into a chicken that's called the dorking that i just mentioned so we are raising dorkings but we are still continuing to add some of the rainbow light egg layers to our flock because we want to maintain that egg laying capability of all the color layers we do have a market for rainbow eggs but we want to have the self-sustainable dorkings as well now those are going to lay less eggs but they're a dual-purpose bird they might lay three eggs a week but they'll have better quality meat so we're kind of offsetting with different breeds here so first thing you want to do is figure out why you want chickens do your research on your breeds and then narrow it down to a handful of breeds that you think you might want to add to your homestead [Music] oh hi so the second thing you need to know is where are you going to order your chickens from you can order them from online hatcheries you can go pick them up at a hatchery you can find a local breeder or you can just go to say craigslist and pick them up or even another local homestead that you're aware of that that also breeds chickens now there are benefits and drawbacks to all of those we have only ever ordered from online hatcheries the main hatchery that we order our chickens from it's my pet chicken we've had excellent experience with them any problems that we've ever had they've completely taken care of and we just we just really love working with that company another hatchery that we worked with was mcmurray hatchery mcmurray shipped our ducks and our goose to us and we had excellent experience with those as well now when you're ordering from a hatchery you have the option of vaccinating your chicks we choose not to vaccinate our chicks but just so you know that is something that an online hatchery or even a drive up hatchery would be willing to do but it's very likely that uh probably a local breeder would not do something like that merrick's is one disease that you can have vaccinated against if you guys think you might want to vaccinate your chicks that's something you're going to want to look into like i said we do not vaccinate our chicks at this time we just don't feel it's necessary we don't feel it's helpful at all or beneficial at all to do that so it's something we don't do you need to do your research on merrick's disease and whether or not you want to vaccinate your chicks just as a side note they typically do not vaccinate bantam chickens a bantam chicken is a miniature chicken so a silky would be a bantam chicken it's a smaller chicken and they do not they do not 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 that you want now the problem with ordering from a local breeder is that they might only carry one or two or three types of chickens whereas if you order from an online hatchery you usually have a varied choice of chickens to get from to order from but if you go to a local breeder they may only carry two or three or four different types of breeds they might not carry the breed you want so you might end up driving around to a bunch of different breeders trying to collect the different chickens that you want assuming you want more than one breed the benefits of going to a local breeder is that your chickens aren't being shipped through the mail because that can be kind of hard on chickens so you tend to end up getting chickens that are in a little bit better shape when you go to a local breeder also you can establish a relationship with that breeder and potentially you can go back to them for more another place to get chickens is craigslist you can most certainly look up on craigslist and find tons of chickens being given away or sold very very cheaply if you're looking for bargain chickens you can most certainly go on craigslist and you can find legit hatcheries on there as well or legit breeders on there as well you just need to do your research on that particular farm that's selling but you can also have a lot of problems with craigslist usually people who are selling chickens on craigslist are typically either advertising their farm which is a good thing or they're trying to get rid of a problem which is a bad thing also if you do order from craigslist make sure that the place you're getting it from is npip certified that means national poultry improvement program that means they're in a certified program where their chickens typically are disease free if you bring home a chicken from craigslist in particular in particular ones that are not day old chicks ones that are older it's very possible you could be you could be introducing a disease to your location or to your current flock just something to be aware of the last place that you can get chickens from is just maybe a neighbor who's breeding chickens maybe they have a rooster and a bunch of hens you can get some eggs off them and hatch them out if you have an incubator or you can just get some chicks off of them and it's the same thing with craigslist just make sure you know who they are and how they raise their chickens and how they take care of them and if you feel okay with getting them from that person then by all means you can do that again there's a benefit to that you have you have an established relationship with that person but there are drawbacks you just need to make sure that you know what you're getting into you know that person very well so again you're not introducing disease into your land or into your current block if you have one see this right here this is called an egg tooth little chickens are born with that little tooth on there that helps them break out of their egg and they will lose it after a couple days and she's sweet when you go to order chickens you might notice that you can order either roosters hens or straight run now roosters and hens are sexed chickens that means that they have a specialist that looks inside the vent of the chicken and they can tell whether it's male or female a straight run means they did not sex the chicken and you don't know what you're going to get it's typically 60 percent rooster 40 hen so the benefits of going to say a hatchery as opposed to a local breeder is that they typically have people on staff that will sex the chickens at a hatchery typica local breeders don't typically do that it's very very rare to find a local breeder that will sex the chicken and also uh hatcheries tend to guarantee the sex of the chicken when you do order through them some chickens are auto sex chickens that means like they can tell the difference between male or female depending on what color they are if they come out one color it's a male they come out another color it's female dorking chicken which is one that i'm holding here is sort of kind of auto sex like you can sort of kind of tell that which one's male which one's female this one here is likely the female because she has a darker head and i'm going to show you the difference with the male who has a little bit lighter head this one here is likely the male you can see that there's no black stripes on either side of the um the brown and the females have a more defined stripe there so this one is likely the male but when we ordered these chickens we did order one male and we ordered three females so we do know that one of them is a male and that's one of the benefits of ordering from a hatchery is that they can guarantee that you're going to get what you order and like i said if you go to a local breeder um you're going to end up with a whole bunch of roosters and you need to have a plan for those roosters when they grow out so the next thing you need to know is when do you want your chickens to arrive now you need to consider the fact that your chickens are probably going to be indoors or they should be indoors for at least four weeks before you move them outside and when you move them outside it needs to be somewhere in the range of about 75 degrees so wherever your area is wherever you're located you need to make sure that the temperature is going to be around 75 80 degrees when you move your chickens outside otherwise you're going to have to provide supplemental heat for us we like our chickens to arrive sometime around april a lot of people like them around april because it's easter time and you get little baby peeps and it's fun for the kids the thing is is if you are ordering a variety of different breeds or if you're ordering a specialty breed in particular heritage breed if you wait until say march to order those april chickens you're going to be sorely disappointed you're going to find that most of them are sold out the time to start thinking about ordering chickens is in november the previous november if you want them for april start thinking about ordering chickens um around the holidays for the following year because they do sell out in particular the rarer breeds will sell out so for us we always order our chickens if we're ordering from an online hatchery around november now we'll place our order around november and then we will get a selection of different dates that they can arrive we pick which date is most convenient for us you need to make sure that you're going to be home on that date or that week of that date because you don't know when they're going to actually arrive you know when they're going to ship but they could arrive the next day they could arrive two or three days after that you need to make sure that your schedule is clear that you can go pick those birds up at any time of the day and that you're going to be ready for them so make sure your schedule's clear that week and you're going to pick the right week the day they ship at least when it comes to my pet chicken you will receive an email that says that your chicken shipped and i'll have a tracking number completely ignore the tracking number because it's completely and totally useless all your chickens are going to be shipped via u.s postal service and the tracking numbers are almost never updated on time as a matter of fact it will tell you that these are going to be shipped overnight and very rarely will you ever get them the next day they could arrive the next day they could arrive two days from then they could arrive up to three days chickens are good for about three days maximum in the mail they live off of the yolk that is that they had in their 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 increasing the chances of having dead chickens or mamed chickens the longer it takes so the thing that i do the day that my chickens ship i will call the post office or i will stop by my local post office and i will let them know that i have a chickens that are going to arrive in the mail and that i would like them to call me as soon as they arrive and i specifically say that and i prefer to go into 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 a lot of times they will let those chickens sit back there and if you don't get a mail delivery until five o'clock sometimes they will just put them out on the mail truck and just deliver them at five o'clock to your house those chickens sitting in there at the post office all day and again that increases your chance of having dead chicks you're going to want to go in and pick them up so make sure the post office has your phone number and even if it's on the package and a lot of times the post office will say as long as it's on the package we'll call you you need to specifically say call me as soon as it comes in i don't want my chicks to be delivered i want to come and pick them up and they will do that and our post office is really good about that this has been our fourth delivery so far all right so you have your reasons for getting your chickens you have your breeds picked out and you found yourself a breeder or a hatchery to order from and you have a date picked out when your ship your chickens are about to arrive so the next thing you need to consider is where am i going to house these chickens there are a bunch of different options you could either go with something that you built or something that's manufactured you can repurpose an old shed you can have a barn we're going to show you what we have here which are two mobile coupes and two different versions of two mobile poops that we have on our small one acre homestead the first one that we built is made almost entirely out of new materials what it is is it's a coop that will house about about 10 birds 10 adult birds comfortably it is it has a covered run that is covered in half inch hardware cloth and it has five nest boxes in it this is what we used initially for our chickens when we got our very very first batch we moved them out here to this particular coop when they were about four weeks old and then we just moved them around the yard about every day or so to give them fresh grass and then at about eight weeks of age we added this electric premier one netting around the outside and this netting comes with doesn't come with but this netting uh we ordered a solar charger to go with it and uh if you guys are interested in knowing more about this particular setup i'll leave a link to it but we added this electric fence around it and we let the chickens run free inside the electric netting now that we are adding on to our flock we built a second coupe this coupe over here is made almost entirely out of recycled materials it's made out of pallets and the only thing new on it is i believe the roof and the wheels that it costs uh somewhere around the vicinity of 150 bucks most of that money is tied up in the wheels which are very pricey this is a coop that is designed specifically for laying hens the only thing that these chickens use this for is for sleeping at night and for laying their eggs and they can go underneath to seek shelter from the rain when needed but most of their time is going to be spent in the run so these are two different versions of mobile coupes we do use them both right now we have our adult hens out here and we have some six week old bullets that are being grown out in here along with some ducks and a goose named ed we're gonna leave some links to those videos too if you're interested in those but you're gonna need to consider what kind of coop or how you're going to house your chickens and you need to have that built long before your chickens arrive you don't want to go rushing around trying to figure out shelter for your chickens uh the day that they get here so that's something that you need to consider do your research on what works for your particular area whether it be a mobile coop whether it be something stationary and whether it's something you're going to build yourself or something that you're going to get say off craigslist or from a neighbor or someone else and how you're going to do that so when talking about predator proofing your your chicken coop you need to know what kind of predators are 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 ground predators such as the raccoons and um the foxes we use the electric fence and the electric fence works really really well at keeping out those predators and i can tell you that the foxes are walking right past this coop and that's how well it's working we actually heard one get zapped in the middle of the night we saw one the other night right up by our compost pile and then a week before that same one was by our garden so he's kind of scoping the place out but so far he's not been able to get in with the electric fence very important that you consider ground predators whenever you are building a coop now there are a bunch of different other options for digging ground predators if you have a permanent coop you can dig down into the ground and you can put some sort of mesh down there so predators such as a raccoon or a fox or something can't dig underneath a fence that's another option if you have a permanent structure but for us with a mobile coupe the electric fence works really well now with aerial predators such as your owls and your hawks we went with this particular system which is basically just colored mason line that is strung up in a haphazard pattern across our run it's the idea here is to try and keep it spaced no further than two feet apart now the reason for that is because hawks when they dive down they dive down at around a 45 degree angle and they don't like to dive into an area that they're going to get trapped in so when they see all of that that line up there they don't like to dive into that i can guarantee you this works because uh we had several hawk attacks we had we did lose a chicken to a hawk um and as soon as we put up this mason line we have not had one hawk attack yet they've flown over they've come close but they have not gone into that into that mason line so this does work it's just a little bit of a pain every time you move the coop you got to restring up all that mason line so when you guys are designing your coop make sure you consider aerial predators and ground predators the next thing is roots now there are a bunch of different options for roots we found that thicker boards tend to work better with chickens and we found that two by fours actually work fantastic now some people say they need to be rounded edges uh some people like to use tree branches and that's okay if you want to do that but for us the two by fours work absolutely fine for our chickens they fit comfortably on it and the reason we know that works is because we had thinner ones in there before and we had the two by fours lining the walls and chickens all went over to the two by four delay so we know that they prefer that and ever since swapping those old roosts over to the two by fours the chickens lay on those now and they're very comfortable so those work for the adult hens i also work for the babies too because the baby's like sleeping out there as well as far as nest boxes you can use just about anything milk crates um you can see that we have ours designed into the coop here and we also have designed into the coop over here as long as it's one foot by one foot by one foot and it's in a dark area because hens really like to be in a dark space and it has to be lined with something you can use either hay or straw or pine shavings they like any of those as long as it's a nice cushy area that's nice and dark that's going to work perfectly for the hens and any box will work so right before your chickens are about to arrive you need to have some sort of brooder we use an old this is a 105 quart plastic tub and we'll use this to keep the chickens in it for about a week you're going to need to have some sort of brooder now for us we use this eco glow 20. this supposedly holds up to 20 chickens but um i would say it probably holds closer to about well i'm using it for 11 right now i think that's pushing it with the size all this is is this is a plate a warming plate that acts just like a mother henwood and they can go in here and get nice and toasty and they can come out whenever they want to cool off and this you can raise up three different notches to cool it down so chickens are going to want about 90 95 degrees the first week and then you're going to want to reduce the heat about 5 degrees every week thereafter so by raising it up it'll reduce the heat this works really really well so another option instead of using something like the eco glow plate is to have one of these heat lamps this is what you more commonly see when people are raising chickens [Music] what you can do is you can buy a bulb to go in here we buy one we bought one that has a red color to it that prevents pecking but what's even better than the red bulb is to get an amphibian light that screws in here an amphibian heat lamp and what it is it just puts out heat it doesn't put out any light and the reason that that's better than having the red is because um the amphibian light um because it doesn't have any light it allows the chickens to get some rest and sleep at night can you imagine trying to sleep with a light on all the time we haven't used this yet we tried using it and the chickens actually prefer the heat plate a lot better so i would recommend if you can afford it and if you think you're going to be getting into chickens invest in the eco glow or something similar to that there's a couple different brands out there we think this is a much better product than something like this but this is also good in an emergency one other thing that can be that i should point out with these lamps is these clamps are not very um stable and they've been known to fall down and crack and uh catch fire um so just something to keep in mind make sure that these are very well secured now if you are using something like this whereas with the with the eco glow you raise it up into the different notches to cool it down with one of these lamps you want to put it on some sort of chain where you can raise it or lower it to make it either warmer or colder and you can tell if the chicks are comfortable if they're all huddled under the lamp in a ball and they don't come out then they're cold you're going to want to lower the lamp a little bit and if you find that uh they're you know far away from the lamp and and uh huddle in a quarter somewhere trying to get away from the light then they're too they're too hot so you're gonna want to raise it and if you find they're just kind of scattered about like ours are here then they're comfortable they go under when they're cold they come out to cool off and then they're comfortable that's what you want the other thing that you want to get probably about a week before your chickens arrive is some sort of chick starter now you want to make sure it's chick starter because it has a higher protein content than say a grower feed or a layer feed it's very and plus it has different minerals in it than a layer feed or a grower feed now there are many different brands of chick starter but there are two different types one is medicated and one is non-medicated the medicated is uh to help prevent coccidiosis and there is medication in it to help to help prevent that which is a common condition with chicks whenever they're exposed to the outdoors in your soil and then there's the non-medicated which is more of a natural approach you're going to want to have to determine what is best for your situation for us we go with the non-medicated we don't like to medicate unless absolutely necessary that's just our personal philosophy when it comes to ourselves and our animals but we are okay with medicating when necessary but for us we do go with a non-medicated organic starter feed no particular reason for organic other than it's all natural we like a brand that's called new country organics works great for us and when we go to switch over to the grower feed and then over to the layer feed we go to a local feed mill and they make a non-gmo feed that we use for the starter we go with a new country organic starter so while you're gathering your chicken feed and supplies another thing you're going to want to pick up is some sort of electrolytes for your baby chicks now what these are going to do or these are going to this is going to give your chicks a little bit of boost of energy it's basically like gatorade for chicks these guys have been in particular if they're coming through the mail have been in a box for anywhere between one and three days they tend to be dehydrated this will help them perk up it helps give them a good start now there are a couple different recipes for how to make this yourself these usually come in about a three pack for about two bucks honestly you're not saving much money by making it yourself and this is already formulated specifically for chicks so personally i would just go for this it's just so much easier to keep these these are also really good for chickens that are dehydrated in the summer so i do keep a couple of these on hand again it's like pedialyte or gatorade for your chickens one of these little packets will make a gallon of water what i typically do is i get one of these quart jars and i'll put about a quarter of a packet in it the day that i know my chicks are about to arrive i'll put about a quarter of a packet in it and then i'll fill the jar up with room temperature water you do not want to use hot water and you do not want to use cold water because you don't want to burn your chicks and you don't want to chill them off remember they want to stay warm so i will have this ready to go whenever my chicks arrive another thing that you're going to want to have on hand is apple cider vinegar i personally put a splash of this in all of my animals feed this provides some potassium and some energy for the chicks it's also good for antiviral anti-fungal it helps prevent parasites i put just a little splash in this jar and then through the rest of their lives i will continue to put apple cider vinegar in their water and i do believe that it works and it really does help the chicks so for me i use the bragg's organic brand um i'm not 100 for organic on everything it's just so happens to be the brand that i get um just as long as it's raw apple apple cider vinegar should be okay okay so you get the email that your chicks have shipped now is the time to set up your brooder get your brooder box and again we use just use this plastic crate that's about 105 quarts you want something small enough that they're not going to get lost in it and you want it to be easy to clean out that's why we use the plastic tub put your brooder in it we put a board in it to set our water on we don't fill up the water yet and we put two little containers in it for their food and all we're using here is a little lid just something small don't put your food in it yet we put about one inch of pine shavings in the bottom now some people use newspaper some people use paper towels i don't like to use those because in particular with the newspaper the birds are going to be pooping a lot and poop is slippery and what can happen is they can their little legs can slip and if they um if they slip and you kind of do a split they can get something called splay leg basically their legs kind of pop out a joint and they can actually become deformed if it's not corrected immediately because we don't want them to have any leg problems we use the pine shavings the only downside to pine shaving some people say that sometimes the birds can get confused with uh what is their food and what the pine shavings are but as you can tell our birds have no problem figuring out what the food is because i'll just go over and show them that this is the food and then they come over and they'll peck at it see they know what food is okay now assuming your chickens are coming in the mail you're going to get a phone call that your chickens have arrived or maybe your your breeder calls you and says hey your chickens are ready come pick them up today now the very first thing that i do is i'm going to plug in my brooder whether it be an eco glow or whether it be a lamp you're going to want to get that nice and warm for the chicks when they arrive i fill up their water container with the electrolyte solution and the splash of vinegar and i put their feed in the little lids now depending on how many chicks you have you might want to have just one of these if you only have like say a handful of chicks or we have 11 in here so we put two little lids in here you'll know if they're fighting over the food or not how many you need i get this all set up before they arrive now if you're ordering your chicks be in the mail chicks will last up to three days in the mail hopefully depending on how well they're taken care of usually we've had very good luck out of the four times that we've ordered at chickens through the mail we've only ever had one issue and that chicken unfortunately had to be called but the company took care of the issue they refunded us actually they replaced it with another with another chicken um and everything was good 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 get them home you're going to want to unpack them one at a time examine them make sure that they're okay that their legs are okay their wings are okay and you're going to want to take them and you're going to want to dip their bills in water and i'll show you how to do this so when you take them out of the box you're going to want to hold them very gently they're very fragile and you're going to want to take their beaks and dip it in the water and see you're 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 the food they all will but you definitely want to dip all their bills in the water and make sure that they all get that first drink that's very very important that they get that first drink once they start eating they need to continue to eat so don't feed them in the car on your way if you have like an hour drive home don't feed them in the car and then not give them anything until they get home make sure you wait till 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 their wings are okay make sure they're eating and drinking all the time they're sleeping okay and they're nice and warm and not too hot not too cold and and if there's any problems at all you're going to want to reach out to your breeder and tell them what the problem is one thing just to be aware of is it's becau in particular if you're ordering through the mail it's very possible that when you open that box up that you could potentially have dead chickens that's something to just prepare yourself for you need to know what to do in that case and worse than that i would say is if you happen to open up a box and you find a chicken that is deformed or one that is has been damaged so badly that it needs to be called if you're interested in knowing a little bit more about that we're going to have a video when things go wrong with chickens we'll link to that up above and in that particular case uh something happened to us i know the company took care of us as far as refund and or as far as replacing the chicken but we still had to deal with the aftermath of having a deformed chicken and we explained what happened in that particular case that's something you're going to want to prepare yourself for when ordering chickens whether it be through a breeder or through the mail something like that can happen and you need to know how to deal with that in that particular situation so after your chickens are home assuming everything's okay one thing that you need to be aware of and keep an eye out for is something called pasty butt pasty butt occurs whenever your chicks whenever the poop gets stuck to the little fuzz uh around their vent and what can happen is is that can act as kind of like a cork or a plug and it can block them from excreting and if that happens they will die so one thing that you need to do and monitor over the next week in particular that's probably the most crucial or critical time is you need to pick each one of those chicks up oops oops and not trying you want to pick each one of those chicks up and you want to check its vent and make sure there's no poop stuck there if that happens uh you're going to need to clean it off and the one thing you don't want to do is take that and pick it off because you could actually remove the skin when you do that so you want to take a q-tip and maybe a warm washcloth and you want to sweat it and slowly dab at it don't pull don't tear and you want to try and remove that excrement from their fur very very gently until it's all gone and the chicks not going to be very happy about it but you want to try and get that removed and what some people like to do is they want to they put vaseline not in the vent but around on the fur and that helps prevent future excrement from sticking to the fur you can do that as an option the other thing you're going to want to make sure you take care of at all times is making sure they have clean water you can see that the birds have already pooped in this water and it hasn't been very long so we're going to go take this outside and dump it and we're going to refresh the water that's something else that you want to make sure you do at all times and just anytime also that you see that they scrape pine shavings in their food make sure you pick that out we want to try and make sure they eat the least amount of those as possible [Music] all right so these little guys are four days old and as you can see they're really active i replaced their uh the little lids that i had in here with their food in it uh with the bigger container because they were they figured out what their food was and they were starting to scratch it all out so this kind of helps prevent them from scratching it out and it's about this time that i start introducing them to some treats now i don't give them treats before day three i want them to know what their food is first and on around day three or day four that's when i start introducing treats now the treat that i introduced is scrambled eggs some of you may think this is weird but actually chickens live off of eggs when they're inside of the egg they live off the yolk and actually this is actually really good for big chickens as well provides a lot of protein and if you have an abundance of eggs it's okay to feed it to your big chickens i do i usually mix it with some basil and some garlic and uh and it actually helps prevent worms as well as a as a worm preventative so around this time is when i start introducing treats such as the eggs and also around this time i start training my birds to my voice i use a call where i use the noise choke and i'm going to train these guys to come to my voice when my big chickens are outside in particular if we're moving the fence and they're roaming around the yard if i call them with they come running and that's what you want you want your birds to be able to come running in case uh you need them in you know to come near you for whatever reason maybe they're starting to cross the road or wandering off or something but when i do that voice they know treat and they all come running at that so i'm going to start training these birds with chip choke now it's going to take them a little while to understand it you have to do this repeatedly time after time and every time you do it you want to give them a treat and then they'll pick up on it also these guys have not had scrambles eight eggs before so it's gonna take a little bit until someone pecks at it and figures out what it is but once they understand what it is these guys are gonna 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 that these are room temperature or cold not not taught i'm going to break these up into little pieces and i'll show you what i do [Music] they're curious [Music] there we go [Music] check see them wiping their face you'll see birds do that a lot they're wiping their beak off [Music] [Music] trip [Music] [Music] when i have a treat when one gets it they usually squeal and run around and then others chase them just like that they figured out that that's true so you'll start to see if they do that they figured out what scrambled scrambled eggs are this is their first time with scrambled eggs now i'm going to do this again tonight and i'll probably do it twice a day and i'll do the time i do it i'll always put it on my hand so that they get used to my hand as well and um and soon before you know it they're going to start picking up the means treat and then we'll start trading it out with different treats and they're going to be all confused because they're going to expect scrambled eggs and then they're going to get something like cucumbers and be like what the heck and that'll be the same thing someone will come up and taste it a little bit they'll figure out that hey this is good stuff and then they'll all come in and then they'll start realizing that that's 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 couple days i will uh just to get them used to the chip chuck um so probably for the next uh probably three days i'll do it twice a day and then i'll probably just do it maybe once a day and then maybe once every other day these little guys are starting to run out of room as you can see they're starting to get bigger and i think it's time to i think one of them just pooped in the water dish yep it is time to move them to a bigger home [Music] all right guys so as you can tell our chickens are outgrowing their baby brooder we keep them in the small brooder upstairs um just to keep an eye on them for the first couple days and we want to keep them in a small area so that they get used to where their food is and where their water is they are already starting to feather out this is now day five and we think that they need more room so we are moving them down here to our basement now let me show you our brooder setup you just watched me put this together what i have is a tarp here on the floor and the reason for that is because there's holes in the bottom of this box and when i go to move this whole mess outside when the chickens are ready to be moved outside permanently and i go to clean up this mess i don't want to have to shovel pine shavings off the floor so i put down a tarp first and then you can see i use a watermelon box as their brooder i got this for free at a local whole foods i just called them up and said hey can you save me a box and uh and they did um i have to thank eric over at life in farmland for this idea because he's the one that suggested using gaylord boxes that's what they're called for the brooder and i think it's a brilliant idea so we got this for free from a local whole foods and then i assembled it and filled it with pine shavings and then i want to show you this little setup here so this is two plastic bins that are put together with a hardware cloth great on top now we discovered this with our ducts because our ducts are extremely messy they're flinging food and water everywhere they're making a huge mess and they were soaking the pine shavings and so we started using this for the ducks and we're going to continue using this for any of our babies as well this should help prevent pine shavings from getting into their water and i'll show you how it's set up so we have basically a plastic bin you can see there's two of them here inside of another plastic bin and the reason for that is is if the if the chickens or if you're raising ducks spill any water in here it's very easy to just pull that top bin out rinse it out and put it back without all the pine shavings caving in now this here jeremy made and this is just some pallet wood with a piece of hardware cloth over it and you can see we put some duct tape on it um just to help prevent the uh the chickens from getting cut and this just lays over top it's just a i think we have it backwards this is just a frame just like that and we're going to put their food and water on top of here and that'll prevent them from kicking pine shavings into their food and water and then we just put a little wrap over here the bird should have no issues jumping up on on top but just in case we put this little ramp and there's just a little block underneath it to help support it and we just pushed all the pine shavings up now i'm going to bring the brinsia brooder down here and plug it in here and we're going to raise it one notch because we are entering into week two and we want to decrease the heat by five degrees so we want it to be somewhere around the 85 degree range we're gonna decrease it five degrees every week for four weeks until we're down to about 65 70 degrees and then we'll move the birds outside so i'm gonna go upstairs i'm gonna grab our babies and we're gonna introduce them to their new brooder [Music] all right so you can see that i raised the brimsy up uh one notch so it'll be a little bit cooler for them and as i put each one in i checked them for pasty but and they're all really good right now and you notice that i just kind of put them around in different areas put some on top some on the bottom so that they kind of know that they can go up here and they'll train each other on how to do that one thing that i forgot to mention is about this time i start introducing grit anytime that you give your chicks food you should start giving them grit now eggs are pretty easily digestible i sometimes give grit with with scrambled eggs i haven't given it yet to them this is their first introduction to grit and i'm going to probably start giving them a few other things as well like maybe some chia seeds or something like that one but one thing to know is any time you start giving food you want to always give grit and i put a little dish in here don't be surprised if when you introduce something like this they eat the entire container it's they're not going to die from it it's okay if they overeat it um it's just going to pass right through them and it's the same thing whenever we go to introduce dirt in the next couple weeks they'll probably eat the whole thing and you'll be freaked out that they're eating it but that's okay so we're gonna let these guys adjust and uh they seem to be doing well so far and uh they're probably gonna enjoy their new little space oh they're already running all around i may have to plug these holes up though these are kind of big for them and i don't want them coming out so i'll probably put some sort of tape uh over these holes so that they don't go through it let's go do that now oh hello there oh hello oh hello no there's no eggs in there they're looking for eggs that's funny all right i'll go give you scrambly eggs [Music] all right so it's the start of week three you can see that these guys are getting used to my call when i when i bring them a little treat i just wanted to go over some quick things about treats you want to make sure you don't give them too many treats you can see that i just give them a small amount and a little lid each bird gets a very small percentage of food compared to what they get as far as regular chicken feed and then as far as what i give them i you know i start off with some scrambled eggs and then i switch over to things like um cooked quinoa i have some sprouts in here this is the first time they've been trying some tomatoes from the garden sometimes when you give them something new they'll peck at it for a little bit and they might not um may not look like they like it at first but you know just like a little kid who's trying something for the first time sometimes it takes them a few times before they learn to enjoy something we just want to really make sure that you don't give them anything like dry seeds um or dried beans or anything like that that that dried rice is really bad anything that's going to expand when wet you want to make sure that it's already cooked and when you give it to them or like as far as beans or rice or anything like that make sure it's already cooked because it can obviously expand in them and that will kill them if you do something like that you also want to make sure that you don't give them anything like plain old rice or plain white bread because um there's really no nutrition in that you want to make sure that you're giving giving them some good nutrition good healthy healthy foods when you do give them foods just make sure whatever 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's good food so over the last these birds have been going fairly well but i started to notice uh that one of our birds our favicana was kind of hanging back looking a little listless and i also started noticing a lot of bloody diarrhea now what this looks like is it looks like kind of ground hamburger in like a pool of water or foam and uh that was a little concerning to me now something to note is that chickens in general will shed the lining of their intestine it's very natural and it shows up as like a little chunk of red sometimes in their stool you'll see it with big chickens and baby chickens alike but when you start seeing a whole bunch of um this ground hamburger looking stuff within some some diarrhea especially if it's like foamy or clear diarrhea that could be an indicator of coccidiosis and after watching it for a couple days uh and and noting that one of my birds was acting a little listless i decided to treat um the birds now coccidiosis is an intestinal parasite that occurs naturally in the soil and in the ground water and all birds are going to be exposed to it one way or another now typically birds build up an immunity to coccidiosis but sometimes their immune systems get overrun and if that happens then you need to treat it and what i use this is the second time that i've had coccidiosis occur in my baby birds and what i use to treat it is something called chloride this is the brand name for um something called amprolium now what improv prolium does is that it prevents the uptake of b1 uh in the chickens and it prevents the uptake of b1 of the b1 vitamin in chickens so that it the coccidiosis doesn't have access to b1 so what you're going to do is add one 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 have a one gallon jug here that i put one teaspoon of the amprolium in uh it's just a powder and then i added water to it made sure that it was well dissolved and i'm going to use that to fill their feeder for the next five days today is day one that i'm treating them you can already see that our little um is perked up a little bit she's doing pretty well and now she's eating a little bit so that's a good sign so when you have toxidiosis or spectoxidosis in your flock you need to treat the whole flock because uh well one it's very hard to pick out which one is it has the uh the oxidiosis and two it's more difficult to treat this one and three if one has it it's more than likely all of them have it so you should generally treat the whole flock so i don't mean treat all the birds that i have on the property i'm just going to treat the ones that are in this area generally birds will develop an immunity or antibodies to coccidiosis it generally takes time sometime around week three i start introducing some soil to their uh brooder box and that generally builds up it's just a little bit soil at a time that generally builds up an immunity to some of the clock city horses but it looks like these guys were exposed to it a little early quite possibly from just a bunch of us handling the birds going out the bigger birds coming in handling soil and groundwater and then coming in here and handling the birds they probably got exposed to it early and it just overran their system that can happen you just want to be aware of the situation and know kind of sort of what it looks like and just make sure you have some cord on hand to treat it if necessary also since we're starting week three we need to raise up the brooder one notch so i'm going to do that remember you're going to reduce the heat for 5 degrees every week this is probably my biggest pet peeve with this particular with this particular brooder because it's really challenging to get these get these little clips off sorry birds all right so brooder's raised and these little guys if you've noticed are starting to grow wings they're getting their feathers in and they are getting kind of crazy i don't know if you notice but they're jumping up on top of the food dish they're jumping on top of the water dish and it is not too long before they're gonna be jumping up on the side of this box so i'll show you what we do we have built this cover that's gonna go on top it's basically just two two by fours that are and um half inch hardware cloth that's stapled to the boards and we're just gonna lay it on top to prevent these guys from flying the coop [Music] they're freaking out a little bit all right so there you go this is going to keep these guys from flying the coop and i'll show you what happens in the next couple days and we'll also keep an eye on that little favicana and anyone else to make sure that there's no more bloody diarrhea and everyone's doing well all right so these little guys are done with their five days of treatment for the quarry most of their poop looks pretty good i haven't seen any of the bloody poop um and today i started them on some b1 supplements now remember that the coral prevents the uptake of b1 and so now that we've removed that from their systems we want to replace that so what i do is i give them a little bit of neutral drench in their water and i'm gonna do this for one or two containers full of water and then that's it because uh this stuff contains molasses and molasses tends to um give the birds diarrhea and so you know just just be careful on how much you use this i just use about a dropper full and a half in about a gallon of water and then i only fill that container up twice and that and that's it then they're done whether or not your birds end up with coccidiosis or not uh you wanna around this time around week three week four start introducing them to the native soil so what i like to do is i like to put a little bit of soil in there and just kind of get that their bodies and their systems uh used to the native soil so what i have here is uh some um cabbage plants that didn't grow in the garden they're stunted you can see there's a little bit of garden dirt on there so i'm just gonna put these in there and i wouldn't be surprised if there's nothing but a stem left after a little bit of time you can see they're very well experienced on pictures but they're a little confused as to what [Music] what it is we'll start packing at it go get used to it there's you can also see that these guys are starting to dig holes what they're trying to do is dust bathe now before i introduce a box of dirt which i'm going to do in the next couple days i want to make sure that they're okay with the soil so i'm gonna do this slowly i'm gonna let them digest this and then we'll introduce a little box of soil for them to dust bathe in uh after after i know that they're okay see she's naughty [Music] all right these little guys are three and a half weeks old you can see how naughty they are they're starting to get pretty flappy uh this one in particular is this is our olive egg [Music] who's uh ready to get out of here so i think they probably only have another uh they're three and a half weeks old they only have another um i would say maybe four or five days before we move them out to a secure coop because they're ready to go but right now we're going to put in a dust bathing box now uh you guys know that i already mentioned that we've been introducing them a little bit to the soil now we're ready to go on and put in a full dirt box so they can uh dust bathe in it all right for a dust bathing box i'm just going to use a cardboard box and we're just going to cut it now this is not going to be big enough to fit all the birds probably they're all going to try and fit in there at once but i'm limited on space so we're just going to put a little box of dirt in there so i'm just going to cut it i'm going to cut a little box just like this and i'm going to go put some native soil in now again it's really important to use native soil to make sure that these birds are getting accustomed to the coccydiosis that's naturally occurring in the soil i might also put a little bit of wood ash in there because wood ash does help them with their dust bathing that is the way that they stay clean uh so i'm gonna go get that and i'm gonna be right back and we're gonna see how these guys like it oh you're naughty [Music] all right so i just came back inside with uh with a little box of dirt that i shoveled up from the yard and i put some wood ash on top we're just gonna mix this together there's probably some worms and bugs in here now again this is how chickens uh take their baths this is for dust bathing it helps keep off mites it's really important that chickens dust bathe don't be surprised if they eat a lot of this dirt [Applause] [Music] they're probably going to be scared of it at first and then they'll get the hang of it real quick all right see how they like it all right guys i'm gonna move this over and put this in so check out the ugg boots on this little cochin aren't those awesome [Music] all right so we're coming up on week four here and like another two or three days and these birds have got to come out of my basement if you could smell through the camera exactly what i'm smelling in that basement uh you would turn off the channel it smells atrocious and when it gets to that point and when the birds are flying around inside their brooder you know it's time for them to go outside and i specifically picked this week to put the birds outside because even though it's june we're having a cool week and by cool i mean 85 84 those kinds of temperatures and at night it's going to be above 60 degrees so uh it's a perfect time to put the birds outside and get them acclimated to the weather out here now if your temperatures are going to be below 60 degrees you will have to put an external heat source outside for those birds but because our temperatures are perfect it's not too hot not too cold it's a good temperature to bring them outside so right now i'm going to get our outdoor mobile coop ready for these little babies i'm gonna put in some pine shavings i'm gonna sprinkle down some sweet pdc sweet pdc is a deodorizer it helps soak up the ammonia smell uh and then we're gonna move them out and see how they do now the plan here is to lock them up inside their coop here and if you come over here [Music] this is our coop so it's a it's a coop and a run and we're going to lock them up inside of here for the first two days this ideally should get them used to this being their home and it should make it easier for them that when we do open the door and release them into the grass area and when it comes to being nighttime that they'll know to go back up here for for hot bedtime if not we have to pick each individual bird up and put them up here so hopefully this will train them to come up here at night we're gonna see how it goes right now we're gonna put some pine shavings in our in our coop now these flat boards here are just going to be used to hold their food and water once they get used to going outside we're going to put their food and water down there but because i'm locking them up in here i want more of a stable place for their food and water so that's why we have the boards now i'm going to sprinkle on some sweet peas this is kind of like kitty litter it'll help um absorb the odors and it's all natural so if they eat it it's okay [Music] all right so we have a little cardboard box that we're going to use to transport them in uh i'm probably only going to get a couple in here before they start flapping around so we'll probably have to take them out in batches you guys ready so this is why they need to go outside see they're ready all right [Music] okay [Music] yeah i figured you were going to do that too won't go far all right guys come on you're gonna have to be dumped [Music] you don't wanna be dumb come on out there we go [Music] they look all confused we need to take these up so they get better [Music] ventilation right let's go see what the other ones are up to [Music] last one [Music] come here dorking you don't want to be left in here by yourself all right go [Music] there you go come on now and there they are now we need to get them food and water all right so we have our water with apple cider vinegar in it and then i transferred their food over to a rubber bowl this will help prevent them from spilling it out the only thing is is they might poop in the bowl so i don't give them too much um and i just have to keep an eye on it and also in there is grit so we're gonna put this in there and we're just gonna keep an eye on it make sure it doesn't run out all right here you go there's your water that's not sitting too good here's your food they're making themselves comfortable by pooping all right so these little guys are all set we're going to keep an eye on their food and water again we're going to keep them locked up up here uh as long as the temperatures stay right and they're not too hot not too cold we're gonna keep them locked up up here for the next two days then we'll open up the sliding door let them down into the run and we'll move their food and water down into the run after uh quite a few weeks i would say probably when they're eight nine weeks old that's when we'll probably start considering whether or not it's a good time to integrate them with a larger flock and we'll take you along as we attempt to do that so we'll see you in a couple days when we let them out into the run all right so our little chickadees have been in here for two nights now we kept a really close eye on and made sure that everyone was comfortable no one got too cold they've been doing really well but let me show you what they've been up to these guys are ready to get out of here they have been digging the place up scratching and scratching and they are ready to go out all right so we are at the start of week four actually tomorrow is the start of week four and these guys have been on starter feed the whole time um starting tomorrow we are going to start integrating in some grower feed now what i do is i have a little bit of the starter feed left i'm just going to start mixing in some grower feed to transition them over and then once all the starter feeds gone they will be only on grower feed it's around week four to week six that you can really start transitioning them over to the grower feed what you can do is you can look at your manufacturer label on your starter feed and it usually will tell you when to start switching them over so for us it's about four weeks and what we use for grower feed is a we have a local feed mill that puts out a non-gmo grower feed so that's what we're gonna we're gonna start feeding them all right so what we're going to do now is we are going to lift up the door and we're going to let these guys explore the grass and bugs and i'm what i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to keep their food up in the top so that they still associate the the coop part with their home because i honestly don't want to have to pick each one of these guys up and put them to bed at night so i'm hoping that they go up there at night time but we're going to keep an eye on that and see if they go up at night if they do not go up at night we're gonna have to pick each one up and put them up there so we'll see how that goes but right now this is gonna be their first day out on the grass and we'll see if they like it release the krakens hello oh oh all right so we're going to leave their food up there so that they think of that as their home um and once they get used to going up in there for bedtime then i'll move their food down here and every morning when i wake up i'll just lift up the door and then every night before before i go to bed when it gets dark i'm going to close this door and make sure that they're locked up safe but this is where they're going to stay for the next uh at least four weeks we're not going to even consider integrating them with with the larger birds over there until they're at least eight weeks old um and then what we will do is we will uh take this entire coop and put it inside the electric fence with the other guys and then just have them uh integrate with each other through the mesh and then after a period of time we have a little door here that we will open up the little creep feeder door that jeremy built we're going to open that door up and we'll let the birds explore their own will if they wanted to go out with the bigger birds and then they'd be able to come back in whenever they wanted to without the big birds following them so we'll get back to you guys in a couple weeks and we'll see how these little guys are doing all right we're at about week five and a half actually and uh our little birds are doing really really well you can see that um they are in their own separate pen separate from the bigger chickens these guys are kind of getting introduced to each other through the fence so it's a safe way of introducing the big chickens and little chickens and uh these guys have been going to bed on their own because by keeping the food up there for the first three days of food and water they knew that that was home i just opened up the gate i didn't bring them down and let them come down on their own and they walked down the ramp and they would explore down here and then when bedtime came as soon as it got dark they went right back up themselves that's definitely the way to do it after about um three or four days i put their food down here and they still know to go to bed at night so that's that's what we're doing these guys are doing really well and uh that would be probably the best way of transitioning your chickens outdoors so when these guys are probably about eight weeks old that's when we're going to open up this gate here this creep feeder door and that will allow just the baby chickens to go in and out and keep the bigger chickens from going in and bothering them and then we'll just kind of see how that interaction goes and that's it so those are the basics for starting your uh 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 you guys along and show you what i did step by step if you guys currently raise chickens i know you guys are the experts out there let me know what i missed i'm curious leave those down below and if you guys are new to raising chickens what do you think do you think this is something that you guys want to get into after watching all this and seeing all this i want to hear from you leave those down below and if you have any questions leave those below as well if i can't answer them i know a lot of other people can so this has been helpful to you guys like and subscribe and we'll see you in tomorrow's video thank you so much for watching um basically what they do is they look inside their bum hole and they can tell from the different shapes in there if it's a male or a female um what do you want me to say look inside their hole what is it a vent yeah the event time they're bomb i kind of lost track what i was saying where was i going with this was that it pine shavings and um hello what was i saying i can't help it i just totally gets lost um oh that was diarrhea did you hear that i wonder if the camera picks that up is it for um [Music] oh this is going to be one of those if you're more into me there's a freaking knot in my face

Channel: Guildbrook Farm

Views: 2,910,381

Keywords: guildbrook farm, homestead, homesteading, farm, farming, backyard chickens, chickens, order chickens, chicken supplies, coccidiosis in chickens, chicken care, baby chickens, chicken coop, chicken coop ideas, my pet chicken, keeping chickens, chicks, baby chicks, chickens 101, chicken starter guide, chickens for dummies, how to get started with chickens, how to raise chickens, raising backyard chickens, raising chickens 101, raising chickens, backyard chickens for beginners

Id: RP4Eb_0hMOs

Length: 75min 33sec (4533 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2017