Our family has kept chickens now for almost a year and we have learned a ton of information, as well as life skills. It has been fun and educational. I want to start out this series on chickens at the very beginning. I will share what we did, what we would do differently and what we have learned.

First and foremost is preparing for baby chicks. If you are starting with day old or week old baby chicks then you will need some type of brooder set up. This can be anything from a top of the line brooder box or it can be just a cardboard box from the grocery store. We raised our chicks in a cardboard box in the spare bathroom for about 2 or 3 weeks. You will need a heat lamp to keep your baby chicks warm. It is recommended to keep them at 95* and then gradually bring it down in 5* increments. We did not use a thermostat. We just put a light over them and if they were huddling too close together we would lower the light. It wasn’t very scientific but it worked. You will also need to have newspaper or some type of bedding material in the bottom of your box. You will need to change this regularly, as baby chicks are quite messy. They need plenty of food and water. We just kept their little food and water container full. You will start them on chicken starter food as soon as you get them. We fed chick starter until we started them on laying mash.

Now that you are prepared for your new barnyard flock, you need to acquire some baby chicks. Depending on what your needs are you will want to decide on what breed of chickens you will need. Here is a great chart to chicken breeds. http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

You can get chicks from many sources. Here are a few hatcheries that you can order day old baby chicks and supplies from:

http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/index.html

http://www.cacklehatchery.com/

http://www.privetthatchery.com/

http://www.heartlandhatchery.com/

 This is just a start. You can google and find many, many more hatcheries. However, we did not go the route of a hatchery. We chose to go to a local feed and seed to purchase week old baby chicks. The feed and seed ordered their chicks from a hatchery. The advantage in going this route is that we could buy one chick of each breed. We were not limited to limits and regulations. When ordering from a hatchery you have to order a minimum of 25 chicks and a minimum of 5 of each breed. My backyard flock consists of:

1 Auracauna rooster

1 Auracauna hen

1 Buff Orpington hen

1 Black Australorp hen

1 Dominique hen

2 Red Star hens

1 Rhode Island Red hen

1 Feather footed Cochin hen

We also have 2 hens that were on our place when we moved here. I have no idea what they are but they lay a white egg. We have quite the menagerie of hens and I hope to expand our variety by at least 5 hens this spring. It’s also a good thing to know about how many chicks you will need for your family. We have 8 chicks laying right now and get about 5-7 eggs a day. This is plenty for our family of 5.

I hope this helps get you started. We love keeping chickens. They provide hours of relaxation and entertainment just watching them, not to mention nutrition.

Trixi Spencer is a wife of 17 ½ years and mother to three home schooled children. We live on a small acreage in Ms. where we keep chickens and horses. I am a saved by grace follower of Jesus Christ who enjoys sewing, cooking from scratch, gardening, putting food by, raising animals, and all the things of an era gone by. We love life and all that it has to offer.