Incubating and Brooding Chickens - Free 15 page Guide

This is a short guide to incubating and brooding chickens written by one of the most influential men in chicken keeping - James Dryden. It is kind of old but I personally think there is still a lot of value in the 'old ways' - chickens haven't changed all that much and it is certainly interesting to see how things used to be done if nothing else.

'Right Click' and 'Save Target As' to download this pdf to your computer

Caring For Chicks - A Quick Guide To Raising Baby Chicks

As a general rule it is usually best to keep chicks of the same age together and to only keep as many chicks as there is comfortably room for (bearing in mind that they grow quickly!). The main concerns when raising chicks are proper heat and proper feeding – there must also always be clean fresh water available (not easy to achieve when they tend to like to go paddling in it and perch on the edges!). Heat should ideally come from overhead as that is the most natural method. They also need to be able to get away from the heat if they want to. For the first two or three days the temperature should be around 95 degrees and will be gradually lowered to around 80 degrees by the end of the first week and a half and then continuing to gradually lower the temperature by about a degree a day. If your chicks have not already been vaccinated then medicated chick feed will help protect them against coccidiosis.

Using A Hoop House To Raise Baby Chicks



Related Blog Post : Using a Greenhouse as a temporary chicken house or scratching shed.

Banties & More - Mary & Carl's Story

Gina, thanks for sending the chicken coop directions. My husband will need to get right on this project. We will need to house the chukars for a while. I think we will be releasing them when they are old enough and hope that they stick around. At this moment we have 3 large cardboard boxes set up in our computer room, which is neat since we spend a lot of time in here.

We wanted to add to the 5 banties we have had for the last couple of years. Don't know if the old gals will accept the young'ns. We had the good fortune that the week old chicks accepted the new hatched babies that we got a week later. Almost lost one little guy. He was cold, but he seems to be holding his own at this time. I believe he and the rest of his batch will be a week old tomorrow.

Then we got carried away and added 6 pheasants. These are not supposed to be released into the wild. We were told that they need to be kept in separate cages because they fight. Don't think I like that idea.

We are going to need to get a little bit more educated on our new fowls. They are all warm and eating a high protein starter feed, grit,fresh water, etc.

Again we thank you,
Mary & Carl

Chicks and the brooder house

Chicks don't have to be kept inside your house, but they do need to have warmth. A chick being raised naturally by its mother would be kept warm by her sitting on it, but would also be able to wander about and get it's exercise and food/water etc. when it wanted. That is essentially what is intended to be recreated when in the brooder house. I have a short video clip on my website of a brooder house - it's from a really old educational film, but you might find it interesting. You can see from the video clip on my site that in that particular brooder house there is a stove towards the back of their area but also space in front and around the sides so that the chicks can get away from the heat if it is too hot for them.

Caring For Chicks - A Quick Guide To Raising Baby Chicks (Video)

In fact, there are several short video clips dotted around through the chicken section of my website including the growth stages for chicks and also how they hatch out in an incubator. Talking of which, here is a recent news story you might like about a ten year old girl who to decided to try and hatch out some duck eggs bought from Waitrose!