Raising your own chicks can be an awesome experience, especially for a family to do together. Your children will enjoy watching the chicks grow and have a greater understanding of food production and the cycles of life.

You will also have the benefit of having hand-raised chickens! This means they, depending on the breed, will likely be very tame and happy to be handled. 

Choosing the Right Breed

In my chicken breeds Webinar, I go into a lot of detail on selecting the right breed, with the main points to consider being forage abilities, climate suitability, egg production, space requirements, noise levels, and breed availability. 

Choosing carefully can mean you have a flock that fits into your family and circumstances beautifully, ensuring a harmonious and thriving flock in your backyard.

Popular chicken breeds that are suitable for egg production include Australorps, Rhode Island Red, Plymouth Rock, Leghorn, Sussex, Orpington, and Wyandotte. 

All these breeds are stars of the backyard chicken-keeping scene with their size, temperament, and egg production all working well in backyard flocks.

Sourcing Day-Old Chicks

Day-old chicks are generally sourced from commercial hatcheries. This will mean they will come to you vaccinated and sexed if that's what you request. Some hatcheries are better than others when it comes to sexing chickens, but most will take any roosters off your hands if they have made a mistake. 

Don’t be shy to go to the hatchery and view the environment for yourself, just keep in mind this will be a commercial production and while animal welfare is a consideration, after all the hatcheries need healthy chicks to sell. You may be confronted with handling and living conditions that you are not used to. They are a business and the business is hatching and getting chicks out the door to their new homes.

Other options include your local produce store, which may well have older birds for sale also. I have also sourced chickens from Gumtree in Australia (I’m going to guess that Craigslist may be the US equivalent?). From these types of sources, it is buyer beware. I have purchased “fertile” eggs that were not all fertile, I have purchased 6 sexed chickens, only to have 2 roosters in the bunch. When buying from these sources you really don’t get any solid guarantees, but you can also get some bargains if you are on a budget.

Preparing the Brooder

To raise chickens from day-old up until they are 6-8 weeks they will need to have a heat source. This is called a brooder. It needs to be draft-free, with constant heat but also one they can move away from. If they cannot move away from the heat source they can overheat and die. The heat sources used by some people are a fire risk, and not recommended. We use a heat plate that will not burn you if you touch it and release an ambient heat the chicks really thrive on. 

The bedding needs to be absorbent and warm. We use pine shavings as we can add layers over a 2-week period to absorb manure and then clean it out and start again. The used bedding is a great addition to my compost.

You will also need feeders and waterers in the brooder, the kind that cannot be knocked over, spillage just makes more work. Also raising them slightly will prevent manure and bedding from being flicked into them.

Temperature and Lighting

The temperature for days olds needs to be at around 33 degrees Celsius ( 91F), but the best way to know if you have it right is to watch the chicks. If they are continuously under the heat source they are likely too cold, if they are at the other end of the brooder avoiding the heat then it's likely too hot. Ideally, you want to see them moving freely between food, water and heat. 

The temperature can be reduced each day if your heater has that ability. Our heat plate doesn't so we have doors and windows that can be opened for a couple of hours we also expand our brooder to give the chicks more space, and therefore more time away from the heat source.

Chicks cannot be left outside without heat until they are fully feathered, as their down feathers will not be enough. This is usually around the 6-week mark, depending on the breed. Once they are fully feathered is best to gradually give them time outside on the grass. Starting with maybe just an hour and building up to all day, and this should be by around the 8-week point. 

As long as you are not in the middle of winter and snow, your 8-week-old chicks will do fine outside as long as they have a shelter that is sun, rain and windproof. 

It's a good idea to have a light source in the brooder if there is no natural light. Ideally, have it set on a timer to coincide with the sunrise and sunset in your area. This will help the chickens regulate their own body clocks to the season before leaving the brooder.

The regulation of light will also assist your hens laying, as that is vital to controlling their egg production.

Feeding and Nutrition

Chicks need high protein feed, they are growing, and you’ll be surprised just how quickly they do, and need feed to help with the growth rate. Chick starter is usually 18-22% protein and they need this until around 8 weeks of age. They can then move to adult feed or grower feed until they begin egg production. At that point layer pellets are the best option.

Chick starter with the medication to prevent coccidiosis is essential. Coccidiosis will easily kill chicks. If you don't want to feed medicated you can purchase unmedicated but I don’t recommend that. 

It also goes without saying that they must have access to clean fresh water at all times.

Health and Disease Prevention

Vaccination!!!! I trust the science on this one, I have seen first-hand what Marek's disease can do, and it's not pretty. If you really don’t want vaccinated chickens that is your choice but you then must be prepared to dispatch any chickens that come down with these common and vaccine-preventable illnesses. 

So that said the main health issues for young chicks relate to hygiene. The bedding must be changed if it is too soiled. We find adding a layer when they are very young (1-2 weeks) but once they are around the 3-week mark it becomes necessary to clean the brooder about every 2-3 days. Once they hit the 6-week mark, and are outside during the day it's much easier to keep it clean. 

I also feed medicated chick starter as it will help prevent coccidiosis, which will kill young chicks. Some people are averse to feeding medicated feed but my theory is if humans are prepared to take Ivermectin then they should be fine with medicating animals. And as I said earlier if you choose not to medicate be prepared to dispatch sick birds.

Something to be aware of when raising chicks in a brooder is if one chick gets sick you need to be able to isolate. One sick chick in a brooder can easily turn in 5 sick chicks and the next thing you know you have lost the lot. 

Socialization and Handling

The best part of raising chicks in a brooder is that you will be able to handle them daily from day one. This means you will end up with tame, easily handled-chickens. As we have grown our flock in size we have lost some of this tameness. Which I find a real shame. 

Most important if you have small children always stay with them when they are handling chickens, in their excitement I have seen toddlers put a stranglehold on a chick and nearly crush it. It's vital to teach them to be gentle when handling chicks and this will help promote the chick's trust in humans and reduce stress.

Transitioning to the Coop

Around the 8-week mark, depending on the weather, chicks can be moved to a coop. I try to do it gradually by using a rabbit hutch to give them a week outside during the day before moving them to the coop permanently. 

If you have a sheltered coop they could go straight in, remembering my chickens are pasture raised and therefore are out in the open. 

It is a really good idea to have some small roosting bars when they first go into a coop particularly if they are moving into an already established flock. They will need to find their own place in the pecking order. Unless existing birds are very low in aggression I don’t recommend putting 8-week-olds straight into a coop with them, but rather gradually introducing them. 

Enjoying the Rewards

Congratulations! If you got your chicks to 10 weeks old you have done an eggcellant job! Mortality rates of 1-5% in the first 2 weeks are not uncommon or unheard of. 

You are now officially a chicken mama (or papa) and will become addicted to chicken raising very quickly.