BACKYARD CHICKS!

We have raised backyard chickens for about five years now. Our first group of chickens were already full grown when we brought them home about five years ago so they really required nothing but food, water, and a safe place to live and sleep.  We only have one of those original chickens still living so we decided it was time for more so this spring we brought home four baby chicks that were only four weeks old and that meant we had a lot to learn in order to take care of them properly.  

The first thing we learned was that they still needed heat.  For the first week of a chicks life the temperature needs to be about 95 degrees.  The temperature can be decreased by five degrees every week after that so this meant that at four weeks old they still needed to be kept at a temperature of about 80 degrees.  Considering the temperatures were still dropping every night this meant keeping the heat lamp on them for a while.  Lucky for us this was not  a problem since we already had the heat lamp set up in the coop from the winter. 

We also learned that the food needed to be ground up small enough for them to be able to eat. This was annoying, but we did it until we found out that we could buy it ground up already!  This may sound lazy, but it was definitely a bonus since they were eating practically around the clock.  We could barely keep up with them the first few weeks!

As the chicks grew, they were given more and more room to spread out.  Now, at about three months old they are big enough that they can pretty much have the run of the coop.   We let them outside every day and they are full of energy!  Goldie, our last original chicken, has made it clear to all the new babies that she is the queen.  Even though they are growing quickly, they are still smaller than her and they seem to be OK with her being the boss and letting her have first dibs on everything.  It is kind of funny to watch them back off from her. Every one of our chickens has it's own individual personality and that is actually how we can tell the ones of the same breed apart!

Having backyard chickens is a wonderful experience that we have never regretted.  The only thing left now is to wait about 3 more months for them to start laying eggs...

If you are interested in raising chickens or learning more about raising chickens, my favorite resource is a website called BACK YARD CHICKENS.  They have all the information you need to learn just about anything and everything related to raising backyard chickens.