You Can’t Afford To Wait Any Longer!

well hey friends and neighbors is Chuck out at Sheraton Park Farms welcome back to the farm lots of folks are getting interested in raising chickens they're interested in being able to produce their own eggs having a little bit of food Security in their lives know where their food's coming from all that kind of thing we got a big video for you today we're going to talk all things chicken kind of Soup To Nuts beginning to end we're going to start with those baby chicks where you get them how you care for them all the way out to keeping chickens in your backyard on your homestead on your farm collecting those eggs and being able to feed your family so hang out with us for a while we got a lot of information coming at you stick with us let's talk all things chickens okay fresh baby chicks so you've decided that you're going to take the plunge and get into chickens first thing you need to decide is what's the purpose in these birds are you raising chickens just for eggs are you raising chickens just for meat or are you looking for a dual purpose bird one that'll give you eggs now but that you can process for meat later on and you're going to want to pay attention to the breed that you're buying whenever you're thinking about the purpose in your chicken so understand the different breeds and the different purposes for the breeds and what they're best at so for this video we're primarily going to talk about egg chickens and the principles for um for brooding chicks is the same whether it's meat chickens or whether it's egg chickens or whether it's a dual purpose bird they're all basically the same so let's go in let's let's kind of show you the equipment that we've got for brooding the chicks we'll talk about where to get them we'll talk about some common healthy some common health issues and just how to get your birds off to a good start because you know if you don't get your birds off to a good start you're not going to have a good finish so let's go and check these babies out okay so you've decided on the purpose in your chickens and you've decided on which breed you're going to go with now how do you Source your chickens where do you find chickens at well a lot of the local small Hardware feed and seeds will order chicks and we'll have chicks available in the springtime of course there's always the big box Farm Store like Tractor Supply Rural King they have chicks available although my understanding is this year there's a lot of folks interested in getting those and they're kind of hard to find or they're going quick once the stores do get them a number of hatcheries online that you can order chicks from come to mail in a box something kind of like this or uh sometimes you'll find a local Farm like us that hatches eggs and has chicks for sale now once you decide on breed and you've decided on where you're going to get them do you want males do you want females or do you want straight run here's the difference if you are buying just for eggs you're going to want to get females a young juvenile chicken that's a female is called a pullet and you have to have female chickens to have eggs a young juvenile male chicken that grows up to be a rooster is called a Cockrell you do not have to have a rooster in order to have eggs unless you want those eggs fertilized if you don't have a rooster the hen's still going to lay eggs they're just not going to be fertilized and then also straight runs sometimes Tractor Supply Rural King even the hatcheries will sell a deal if you're buying straight run and what that means is you're going to get whatever they put in the box it may be males it may be females it may be a mix of but it's usually a mix of both so if you order 10 straight run chickens and you're ordering from a four eggs and you get 10 cockerels you're not going to be very happy if you get 10 pullets then boom you're off and running usually it's going to be five and five six and four seven and three one way or the other but again you can't be guaranteed that you're going to get all of one it's it's going to be a mix now once you get your chicks you get them home whether they come in the mail or you buy them at the store you're going to need some equipment to get started with the first thing that these chicks are going to need is a home or a brooder this is a brooder this is one that we've that we built I've got plans in the description down below if you want to build one like this this is good for about 75 to 100 chicks for a couple of weeks some other things that you can use for a brooder you don't have to have something fancy like this you can use those drinkers those livestock drinkers that they have the chicks in at the at the big box stores those work perfect a large Rubbermaid tub those work great even a cardboard box something like a box that a refrigerator comes in or a small you know a smaller like a big amazon box works fine there's no no reason these chicks don't care the first one that complains about what type of Brew they're in and then we've got a trick chicken on our hands anyway but you got to have a home you got to have a space for these things the next thing they're going to need is going to be light or heat and we use these lamps they've got a heat a heat lamp in the bottom of them or in the in the element for them this is a little bit more heavy duty because of what we do around here the uh the brooder lamps that you get at the at the box stores or your local Feed and Seed they're fine for small one or two batches a year they're not designed to run all the time like these are we'll run these these will probably stay on for months now but you got to have a heat source there's some other heat devices that you can use for chicks some things called an Ohio brooder which is basically a heat plate elevated up off the floor of the brooder that the chicks can get under and warm those work fine I don't have any experience with them but I've talked to folks that do they like them you're going to have to have feed and water feeding systems we use this this is a seven pound hanging feeder there's a number of different styles of feeders that you can get get you a good quality kick starter this is just a ground feed we get this from our local feed supplier works out really good consider putting some grit in there and grit is just small granulated rocks that's all it is the chicks will eat that as they need it and it goes into their crop and it helps to grind this feed up so that they can digest it see there's even still a little bit of a paladin pellet in here and so those chicks are going to need to grind that up in their crops so that they can digest it they will take as much as they need if they don't need it they won't mess with it they'll leave it alone you're going to need a drinker a number of different styles of drinkers that you can get this is the one that we use this is about a three gallon Drinker we fill it up you can put some apple cider vinegar in it just a little bit that helps with digestion on the chick also helps with things like pasty butt and some of those types of chick diseases and chick problems that you may run into apple cider vinegar it's good for a little bit of everything we put gravel in the bottom of these reason that we do this is a little bit of a deep well in here so if a chick gets in there and they can't get out they're going to drown so we put rocks in there and that gives the chicks something to stand on and helps them get out if they accidentally get down in the drinker now once you get your chicks home you're going to want to just dip their beak in that water right there show them where it is they're going to get a little bit of drink and then they're going to take off running and they're going to be they're going to be good to go something else that you're going to need is you're going to need some bedding or some wood shavings again most of the Feed and Seed big box farm stores sell these you might also check with your local Sawmill or Cabinet Shop don't use black walnut we use primarily Pine now they come in the larger flake size and they also come in just a smaller more finely ground up salt it's not really saltust it's just a finer shaving we use a deep bedding method works out really good we put about 12 to 16 inches of wood chips and material in here as the chicks poo on it they scratch it up it kind of works its way down and it begins to compost that's really good for a couple reasons later on when you bring your chicks out this can be some really good stuff to put on your garden around your flowers or you can put it you know just out on your out on your grass and it helps your grass to grow another benefit from the composting action is that it creates a little bit of radiant heat coming up from underneath the chicks that helps to keep them warm so a couple of different benefits from having that so got to have a brooder again it can be anything that you can imagine a heat Source feed water and bedding and that'll help you get your chicks off to a good start all right so everybody's interested in raising chickens nowadays so if you're not careful this is what you're going to end up with I think we've got about uh probably close to 200 laying hens here but let's talk about these birds how you care for them males females feed water nesting boxes housing netting protection oh let's talk about all that kind of stuff the one thing I do want to say early on is keep in mind this is very scalable while we're doing this for 200 chickens you would do the same thing on a smaller scale if you're on a backyard with a small backyard flock with maybe eight or ten or if you're a homesteader you're doing 25 or 30 this is all very scalable it's all easy up easy down so let's take a look at everything see what we got going on here and see if we can't answer some of your big questions about raising chickens on your Farm Homestead or in your backyard flock okay so let's talk a little bit about some common questions that folks have related to males and female chickens so a male chicken is called a rooster and that right there is a prime example of a rooster and let's see here's another rooster there's a big big guy there and then over here on the side we've got a couple of females so these are these are hens now in order to have eggs you have to have hens female chicken is the chicken that lays the egg you don't have to have a rooster to have eggs unless you want those eggs fertilized because you're either going to let and set on those eggs and hatch them out or you have an incubator and you decide you want to try to incubate some of your own chicks otherwise you don't have to have a male males are good for a number of different things though besides reproduction and fertilization of the eggs males actually are really good Protectors of the flock you can hear that guy up there crowing I think probably in the background so he's growing because he's either found a food source or he's trying to get the hands attention for some reason see there they go there's some hens wandering over there to see what's going on see what he's up to but the roosters are good protectors they sound the alarm whenever there's an issue or a problem they're really good at finding a food source and summoning summoning the hens over to that now if you are going to have roosters you got to be careful on your ratio you only want about one rooster for every eight to ten hens too many roosters can cause too much competition and they can be really hard on your females they'll start wearing those saddle feathers out and they'll become aggressive and they'll start fighting with each other and you'll start getting some problems and issues there goes a boy right there see how all his tail feathers are gone him and some of the other guys have been fighting so that's probably what's happened there so one rooster for every eight to ten hens we're a little bit heavy In This Crowd right now um but we're not we're not too bad heavy everything everybody seems to be getting along the roosters aren't aggressive to the people whenever we come in housing let's talk about housing there's a couple different ways you can do that we have this this is our egg mobile this is a mobile Coop that we keep our chickens in and this thing moves very regularly with the chickens every couple of days we move the eggmobile with our chickens other folks will use a static coupe with a run and we've done that in the past we've had a static Coupe that sits in one place with an area for the chickens to get out wander around roam around scratch around for bugs and grubs and worms and all that kind of stuff the problem that you'll run into with a static Coupe as opposed to a mobile coop is if that Coupe sits in the same place then this can happen with a mobile Coop as well if your Coop sits in one place for too long those chickens will absolutely wear the ground out it'll make it they'll make it look like the surface of the Moon so you got to be careful about having your chickens in one place it's fine if you do just need to know oh there's a male giving a female a hard time that's just something that you're gonna have to be aware of and if you're going to leave that coop in one place for for extended period time you have to mitigate some mud and some smell issues and that kind of thing so let's talk about water for your birds just a second you want to make sure that your chickens have got a good steady never ending supply of fresh clean water now we like to use this out here with our birds and there's a couple of different watering systems they make some galvanized drinkers that are like five gallon that you can that you can use they make some different different style drinkers but this is what we use for our egg Birds it's basically a plastic bowl with a float valve a little it's called a little giant float valve that's hooked to a water hose now as the chickens come up and drink the what the level of the water goes down the valve opens up and refills so the chickens have a continuous never-ending supply of water we don't have any water chores on these animals whenever we move the birds we move the drinker but they always have water you can add a little bit of apple cider vinegar to this it's all that's good for digestion it's good for a number of different things but you can add just maybe a capful apple cider vinegar this thing a couple times a day and that's going to work out great for your chickens but make sure you've got a way to get them a good supply of fresh clean water foreign let's talk about how we feed these guys now there's a number of different ways you can do that and what we like to do is we fill a couple of bulk feeders with a layer pellet that we buy from a local feed mill and we fill this up and the chickens just have the ability to come in here and access it anytime they want it so these are a couple of wall mounted feeders each one of these holds 50 pounds of feed so every couple of days when they start getting low we just come out and fill them up make that one down today and the chickens are able to access it right here they come in get what they want when they want it you can also put some free choice feed out there's some field feeders that you can put out on the ground that the chickens can access another thing that we will start doing here in a few weeks really need to be doing it now is we'll put out a bowl with some grits and grit is just crushed up rock that the chickens eat and it goes in their crop and that helps them break down the food and digest the food so they can make better use of it as opposed to trying to digest those big pellets of food some folks will also feed oyster shell and oyster shell is exactly what it says it is it's it's crushed up shells from oysters the purpose in oyster shell is to add calcium to the diet of the chicken if these egg birds don't have a good source of calcium they will begin to cannibalize their own skeletal system to provide calcium for the shells for the eggs that they're making so I'm going to make sure you're feeding them a good high quality layer pellet that has a calcium that has calcium in it and or you're also feeding them some free choice oyster shell that'll help them to again have good solid shells for those eggs that you're wanting so I know we've talked a little bit about brooders and brooding chickens and buying baby chicks from big box stores and order them online or buy them from the farm a local farm and that kind of thing but another option for buying chickens is you sometimes we'll find folks that will sell what's called a ready to lay pull it and those are the chickens that are about 16 to 20 weeks old that are ready to start laying so someone has bought a chick or they've hatched a chick and they've gone ahead and gone done put the work in for that first couple of months to get that chicken up to size and to age to start laying eggs now ready to lay pullets are going to start laying eggs but they're not going to be very consistent typically a chicken is not going to become very consistent at laying eggs until it's about six or seven months old so those ready to lay pullets may be a little bit sketchy you know one today one in three or four days then one the next day and then maybe not one for a week but they will eventually get with the program so keep that in mind if you're going to be buying ready to lay bullets go visit the farm where you're going to be buying them from is it a reputable reputable farm that you want to be sure to look at the flock and see the flock see all the chickens that they've got are they relatively clean are they in a good environment plenty of fresh air plenty of sunshine are they getting plenty of fresh clean water and those kinds of things you just want to make sure that you're getting chicks that are healthy chickens that are healthy and are ready to go and are not going to cause problems whenever you get them home talk a little bit about protecting your chickens we use this this is a netting from Premier one we've also got some netting from our friends over at Stark line I'll leave a link in the description down below very similar to this a little more cost effective and got some different features but we use an electrified netting on our chickens and this helps to protect the birds from ground Predators things like skunks raccoons possums minks stray dogs that kind of thing and this netting is kind of Space Age and we put this out all up around the area where the chickens are at and then we put an Energizer on it and then it energizes The netting so that if a small ground Critter comes up touches this they're going to kind of get the shock of their life it's going to deter them from coming in getting them away the idea of the netting is not so much to keep the chickens in as it is to keep the Predators out but the netting also helps us concentrate the chickens where we want them and keeps them in the area that we want them to keep them off the front porch and you know out of the pigs and all that kind of thing so the netting is a great way to protect your flock from ground Predators aerial Predators we have a couple of different defense mechanisms there let me show you what those are so aerial Predators one issue that you're going to run into will be Hawks and we have a hawk problem in our in our neck of the woods and this guy right here this is Bruce Bruce the goose and Bruce hates everybody and everything except for the chickens Bruce if uh if an aerial predator or even a crow comes flying over Bruce is going to raise all kinds of stink and all kinds of fuss and the chickens are going to run under the coop so Bruce is our primary Guardian he's our garden Goose that lives in with our chickens now we've got a couple other guys over here that are also helpful in keeping Predators run off doing fandom right there our guineas those are the loudest Critters on the face of God's Earth if anything pulls in the driveway flies over walks past anything that they're not used to those guineas are going to raise all kinds of fuss so we keep a few guineas in guineas are also good guard animals they're really more of an alarm mechanism than they are a guard animal they're kind of ugly but they work good came out yesterday the guineas were raising all kinds of fuss looked up sure enough we had a hawk flying over something else that you're going to need for your egg chickens is a place for them to lay their eggs now we use these These are old recycled galvanized metal nest boxes now we've got four of those things mounted in this mobile Coop now the recommendation is that you need a nest box for every four or five chickens you don't need a nest box for every single chicken because what happens is these birds will decide that they really like the looks of one particular nest and a group of them will go in there and start laying chickens are also prone to lay an egg where another egg is now with the nest boxes you want something that is kind of up off the floor they really need to kind of jump up here you want something that's soft we buy these nesting pads I think I get those on Amazon I'll leave a link in the description down below for those you want some nesting pants so that it's nice and soft in there the eggs don't crack the chickens need to feel like they've got a little bit of a private area that they can go in and take care of their business and this sort of fits the bill now one thing that we've discovered is they also sometimes like to roost and so we've got these roosting bars that's mounted on the front of our nesting boxes so at night when we come in we see a lot of chickens up here those are the only roosting bars we have the majority of our chickens they just sleep on the floor and they do perfectly fine with it it's not a big deal if you want to keep your eggs nice and clean one thing that we do is we close these nest boxes off at night so that the chickens can't get in there chickens are going to poo where they sleep so if you keep them from getting those next nest boxes at night you're going to end up with some nice pretty pristine poo free eggs nesting boxes something else on nesting boxes it doesn't have to be a formal box that's made just for chickens to nest in I've seen folks use buckets milk crates cardboard boxes you can use daggone near anything for a chicken for a nest box they just need to feel like they've got some privacy have a soft bottom and some place that they can get to a little Broody hen here she's not very happy with us hanging around so nest boxes can be about anything but you do want to meet a couple of requirements and uh that way you'll get plenty eggs okay there it is that's sort of the beginning to end baby chicks how we care for them in the brooder feed water protection heat all the way out to the birds out on the pasture and a lot of the principles are the same feed water protection and that's something that you're going to have to manage for those chickens all through their lives um I hope this video has been helpful a lot of information coming at you but again with folks getting interested we want people to get off to a good start we want you to be able to be successful in your Venture on raising birds whether you're keeping them for eggs whether you're growing them for meat whatever the case may be we think more folks need to be mindful and supporting themselves and know where their food's coming from so like we always say please keep us in your prayers may God bless you and your families and we'll see on the next video thanks thanks [Music]

Channel: Sheraton Park Farms

Views: 161,459

Keywords: chicken, backyard chickens, raising chickens, how to raise chickens, caring for chickens, chicken brooder, chicken coop, eggs

Id: OrVjyevFlxc

Length: 22min 47sec (1367 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 04 2023