Eight Acres

Last week I wrote about incubating chicken eggs . If you are incubating eggs and you are as successful as we were, you will end up with chicks to look after. We currently have 33 chicks in a box in our lounge room! I was recently contacted by a lady who was about to buy some chicks and didn't know what to feed them. When I went back to my last post about caring for chicks I realised that I’d missed some important details and changed my mind about a few things. So here is an updated version. the chicks in their box Chicks need three things: a safe, warm place to live; water and food. When chicks first hatch, they don’t have many feathers, so they need to be kept warm, around the same temperature as the incubator (38degC) at first and then gradually cooling as they get bigger. We keep our chicks in a large wooden box. You don’t have to use a wooden box, any kind of strong, draught-proof box will do. I have seen plastic, cardboard and metal boxes used as well. ...

In the past we have had varying success with incubating chicken eggs. This time last year I really wanted to improve our hatch rate and I did some research, which I summarised here . What I found out was that there are lots of things that can affect the hatch rate. Here's how we changed the way we did things and increased our hatch from 5 out of 48 to 34 out of 48, based on the points I raised in the last post. I should also say, that it would be more in keeping with permaculture principle " obtain a yield " for us to let a broody hen do the work of hatching and raising chicks, but incubating gives us more control over the process, even if it is more work. Temperature control is the most important aspect of incubation, it must be 38degC to half a degree. Humidity should be 55-65% for the first 18 days, then 80% for the last 3 days (stop turning at day 18 as well, so the chick can get ready to hatch). The eggs should be turned 2-3 times per day, more oft...

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... As I write this, the chicks are now 10 weeks old and fully feathered  (see post about incubating eggs ).  For a while now its been possible to tell the difference between the pullets (females) and roosters (males), but the crazy little things won't stay still long enough for me to count them!  Finally I had a chance to catch each one and put them in two different cages, one for boys and one for girls, so I could count up.  Of the 16 that hatched, one died early on, and now I think we have 8 roosters and 7 pullets.  Two of the three white leghorns are roosters, it will be hard to decide which one to keep, they are so beautiful.  Anyway, I've noticed that chicken sexing can be difficult for people who buy un-sexed chicks and need to decide to get rid of rooster...

The transition from the chicks living in the brooder box to moving into chicken tractors can be difficult.  Ideally we hatch the chicks early enough in spring that they can move out after only 6 weeks, before they have all their feathers, because it is usually plenty warm enough by then.  Otherwise they have to stay inside longer and once they reach that noisy messy stage I can't wait for them to move out! Even though it is warm enoug, we find that when we put chicks out in the tractor for the first few nights they need to 'tucked in' at dusk because they are so used to living in a box and not having open sides, its quite scary for them.  This means draping tarps, and old sheets, towels and blankets over the tractor so that they feel like they're still in a solid box.  Otherwise they spend the night trying to stick their little heads out of the mesh and sometimes they manage to squeeze out!  We only have to do this for about a week until they get used to it....

We're still having some trouble with our incubators, but when I work that out, I'll post about incubating eggs .  However, when we do managed to hatch some eggs, we've been pretty good at looking after the chicks from then onwards!  For those of you with reliable broody hens who take care of the incubation and chick rearing process, you're very lucky and you don't need to know anything about this post!  But as we raise Rhode Island Red and White Legborn chickens that are not known for their mothering abilities, we have to do all the work ourselves in order to sustain our little flock. We collect eggs in spring until we have enough for the first incubator run and aim to hatch about 12 chicks a season, so we do as many runs as we need until we have enough chicks (this should only take one run, but as I mentioned above, it hasn't been easy this year).  The aim is to get about 6 new replacement hens and 6 roosters to grow up and eat (and maybe one to replace t...

In the end, our new incubator has not lived up to expectations, with only 3 chicks hatched out of 48 eggs.  We suspect a combination of old roosters/hens, wet and not so fresh eggs and getting used to the new incubator (the instructions are in badly translated Chinese-English, so some parts we had to guess!).  Anyway, we will be putting in another batch of eggs in the next couple of weeks to try again, so rather than dwell on our lack of success, I’d like to share some observations of the chicks so far.    First chick out! The chicks were each moved from the incubator and into the brooder box about a day after they hatched, so that they could start eating and drinking.  The brooder box is a wooden box with a light bulb in it to keep the temperature around 38°C (unfortunately we can’t buy the old-style light bulbs any more and will have to buy a proper heat bulb soon when our supply of the old ones runs out).  In the box we put a small feeder full...