Chicken Care Guide One – Hatching Eggs

So you just got hatching eggs delivered? Congratulations, it’s going to be an exciting journey filled with joys and yes, a few frustrations! Want to know the secret to a good hatch? Follow your incubator manufacturer’s instructions for hatching. That’s your first and most important step. Every incubator is uniquely designed and if you ignore the instructions, the machine just won’t work at its best. Besides that first gem, our first chicken care guide is a compilation of tips from our hatchery team to help you start hatching eggs.

Since our guides are basic ones to help you get started, it’s also a good idea to own a chicken care manual that includes details on hatching eggs can also be helpful for you. It will often show pictures of how eggs look as they develop, which can help you decide which eggs to keep when you candle them during the incubation process. We will share tips on candling in another post. Not sure what candling is?

Don’t worry, hatching isn’t as scary as it might seem. We have some helpful care tips to go along with your incubator manual and chicken care book.

Hatching tips are straight from our hatchery team:

• Sanitize incubator/hatcher & all associated equipment – when you’re keeping dirty equipment in a warm, moist environment, icky stuff can grow on it. It’s bad for the eggs, chicks, and you! Start with clean equipment.
• Clean your hands – while it’s not necessary to wear gloves when handling hatching eggs, if you’re handling them a lot it can help keep excess oil/dirt off the shells. Always hatch clean eggs; minute debris is ok, you can just wipe/sand it gently to remove it. Similarly, always candle eggs before they go into the incubator – don’t try to hatch cracked eggs.
• Be sure the temperature and humidity are stable throughout the hatch (follow incubator/hatcher directions). Have a plan for power outages. If you are going to be gone a few days, have an incubator sitter to stop in to add water when it’s needed to keep that humidity stable.
• Candle eggs no more than 4 times in the duration of a hatch (it will help hatch rate). Yes, this is so hard when you’re excited to see the babies developing, but the less the eggs are out in the colder air and the less they are jostled about, the better!
• One rotten egg can ruin a whole hatch, so if you smell something odd, it’s time to inspect and possibly candle all the eggs.

Chicken Care Guide Two – Caring for Chicks

Your day-old-chicks are on the way and you’re in a panic?

Breathe, friends! We’re going to break down simple care tips to help you get started. Don’t worry, most of this information will be on your care flyer that arrives with your chicks. Chicken care is simple, especially if you’ve purchased those chirping babies locally.

There are three main parts of chick care that you need to remember. Warmth, sustenance, and handling.

Warmth

Keep in mind momma bird takes her chicks everywhere no matter the temperature after a certain timeframe and cuddles them at night. That said, new chicks should be kept in a brooder that’s about 90-95F for the first week of life. After that, the common process is to drop the temperature by about five degrees every week until the ambient temperature reaches about 70F or the chicks are almost fully feathered. Don’t want to bother with a thermometer? Chicks huddle together when cold and may start chirping really loudly, and they will try to escape the heat or pant when too hot. Either scenario, adjust their heat source accordingly. Stressed chicks will also be very noisy to call for some needed warmth and sustenance.

Want some brooder ideas? Plastic storage totes, wooden boxes, fish tanks, and store bought stainless brooders work well. Just be sure your choice of heater (heat lamp, heater plate) isn’t going to be a fire hazard. Be smart! Also, cover those brooders with some hardware cloth or chicken wire. You don’t want critters getting in or out – you can thank us later!

Change their bedding if it becomes too wet, so chicks don’t get chilled. Good bedding materials include: pine shavings (preferably without cedar as that may cause respiratory problems), mold-free straw or hay, or even paper (like shredded newspaper or paper bags). Bedding serves two purposes: it helps keep the chicks a bit warmer and it helps make cleaning their brooders a whole lot easier

Sustenance

Keep chick crumble and fresh water available 24/7. As a good practice, when you first get your chicks home, dip each little beak quickly into their water trough so they know where water is. New chicks try to eat anything, but they don’t always discover the water source without help.

Apple cider vinegar can help your chicks cope with stressful situations – the extra sugar and acidity encourage them to drink more water and look for food. ACV ratio is one tablespoon per gallon of drinking water. That same ratio can be used as the chickens grow older too. Just a note: Don’t mix ACV into galvanized containers as it corrodes them and leaches chemicals, which would create toxic water for your chickens.

Want a few tips on their feed and water stations? Chicks are messy. They’ll shuffle shavings into their water, scratch feed out of their feeders and the like. In order to help keep the mess at bay, creating a raised feeding/watering spot can help. You can do this by creating a few inches tall wood frame and cover that with mesh or hardware cloth. Then the feeders and waterers will go on top of it to help catch any mess and even prevent them from from getting shavings in their water.

Handling

Keep holding to short sessions in their first week home. That allows them to de-stress. Be sure to sweet talk them all the time, though! Chickens remember their owner’s voice. It’s common sense, but remember to wash your hands after handling chickens. Be especially mindful that your kids wash their hands. Health experts say that kids under a certain age shouldn’t play with chickens at all. We’ll leave that up to you and your own research!

With most locally bought chicks getting good care, pasty butt clears up on its own or never even shows up. The problem is prolific in stressed chicks, however. Mail order chicks have a stressful journey to reach you and will often get pasty butt shortly after arrival. ACV supplementation does seem to help with preventing the problems.

The good news is that there’s a simple procedure to help clean the chick with warm water. We’ll be posting a video on it soon, and you can read our post HERE on it.

Chicken Care Guide Three – Caring for Adult Chickens

After your chickens have all their feathers, care is easier. Just like with younger chicks, though, there are some tips that will help you help them.

The Coop

Your new pullets/cockerels no longer need special heat once their fully feathered and will adjust to temperatures as long as they have a coop for protection at night. Keep new birds locked in their coop for at least a week before free ranging. This helps them understand where home is so they will return to the coop at night.

Be sure your coop is as draft free as possible (especially where they roost to sleep at night), but still has ventilation.

Speaking of roosts, you generally want a roost bar about eighteen inches or so from the floor. You want at least one 12″x12″x12″ nest box per four hens (slightly larger is ok, but don’t make them too large or too small because the hens may decide not to use them).

Either inside the coop or out, a dust bath is a good idea as the chickens will roll in the dust to keep bugs out of their feathers and cool themselves in the heat. All you need is loose dirt and chickens will often create it themselves if they’ve got access to the soil. Chicken keepers add various items to the dust bath, like ashes or edible diatomaceous earth. You can decide on that.

Need some predator proofing tips? If we had a dime for every person who mentioned having lost chickens to a fox or a raccoon, we’d retire with a beach house on our own island! Here’s the simple truth: if you free range, your chickens will eventually be attacked by something. It’s just the way life works so come to terms with that. If you still want to free range, there’s a cardinal rule: lock your chickens in a safe coop at night. Other than that, here are some simple tips to help you with predator proofing (we’ll have a whole other post to go into more detail with this, so stay tuned).

Keeping Predators Away

• Spring for hardware cloth for at least the first few feet of your fencing around the coop. And burry fencing 6-12 inches underground. Predators usually give up before ever reaching your flock if they can’t get under it or into it easily.
• Be present. It’s not always possible, but visiting your chickens several times a day actually keeps predators away because you’re always showing up, disturbing the hunt.
• Use bird netting. If you’re free ranging, you can’t hawk net your whole yard but you can use the netting over your coop space. This stuff is annoying to install but it works like a charm. Just keep it high enough so you and your chickens won’t get tangled.
• Provide hiding spots in your yard helps. Shrubs, low wood lean-to’s, or movable coops help against flying predators.
• Tall grass does not help anyone. Predators love hiding in tall grass so it’s usually better to keep your lawn mowed.
• Own a rooster. Town ordinances don’t always allow this, but the rooster’s job is to defend the flock and a good one will. The rooster is usually the first one to get killed in a predator attack, but he often saves the rest of the flock.
• Buy breeds that are better at predator evasion. For example, our Buckeye chickens are phenomenal free rangers. The roosters are attentive to predators in a way that’s almost military, and the hens notice signs of a predator before other breeds and evade them well. Faverolles are not good at avoiding predators. They are slow, half-blinded by feathers in their face, and usually chubby from quality time at the food bowl – we love them, but the fox will get them if they’re free ranging.

There’s so many more tips and tricks, but this will get you started and help you think about predator protection for your flock.

Food

Chickens are omnivores so they’ll eat just about anything, but their favorite foods include bugs, corns, and your dinner. We’re not going to go into great detail about poultry feed because this is a basic chicken care guide.

Chicks need high protein “starter” crumble the first few weeks. Depending on the feed you use, it could be up to five weeks or 16 weeks etc. We don’t feed medicated feeds, but if you choose to use medicated starter, do your research.

As they grow, chicks transition to grower pellet or crumble and then adult feed. Until they start laying, high protein is vital.

Not all adult poultry feed is created equal. We feed high quality, certified organic feed. We won’t go into the health reasons for that or the brands we choose. You can pick what’s best for your wallet and goals. If your chickens free range, they’ll get extra bug protein. If not, you may want to supplement for their overall health. And during winter a higher protein feed will be important, especially if you’re eager to get winter eggs.

Mature roosters don’t require high protein (they only need about 10% when it’s not breeding season) and do best when they have other options to eat besides layer feed.

Your choice of feed and water receptacle will do just fine. Keep in mind that chickens scratch at food and water bowls and may waste feed or dump their water if the container isn’t doing its job.

What should you supplement?

• Layer feeds often includes enough calcium for laying hens; if you need to increase calcium, ground oyster shells are a good option.
• If you need to help your chickens with a molting or their feathers are just looking pretty ragged, add whole oats to the feed.
• If it’s cold and you want to help them get through the winter, add some corn for a snack or scratch to increase their fat intake. Don’t overdue the corn feedings or that’s all they’ll eat and it doesn’t have enough nutrients to sustain them well long-term.
• If your flock is housed indoors 24/7, they’ll need flint grit
• If you want to bump up protein you can also include non-poultry meat, yogurt, or sunflower seeds as a few examples.

Stress

Apple cider vinegar or oregano oil can help your chickens cope with stressful situations even as adults. Common use of ACV is one tablespoon per gallon of drinking water. Use the manufacturer’s directions for supplementing oregano. Oregano is also considered by many poultry breeders to be an exemplary herb for overall chicken health (we tend to agree).

Stressed chickens may start to bully. You can read about chicken bullies on our blog HERE.

Stressed chickens may get sick. Try not to let them get overcrowded, try to provided quality feed, and spend time just watching your chickens so you know if anyone is getting sick.

Remove sick chickens right away. Poultry diseases spread like wildfire in the flock. It’s better to isolate a sick chicken to care for it or cull it if need be than to let it stay with the others and kill off the flock. You can buy a chicken health handbook that will help you, but the longer you own chickens the more easily you’ll be able to spot signs of trouble.

Thanks for reading!

We believe chickens make the world a happier, less hungry place and we’re excited you’re on this journey to own chickens. If you have questions on eggs, chicks, or chickens you order from us, we’re always here to help. Love this article? Drop a comment below.

Need more ideas for research? The first place we recommend is your state’s agriculture extension. If your state doesn’t have much poultry information, a nearby state usually will and they have documents loaded with helpful, researched information from chicken care to diseases, and often even the laws regarding poultry keeping in your state (i.e. rules on selling eggs).

Happy Chickening from the Chisel’d Creek Farm Team!