Am I crazy

[Belletower]

I have hatchery chicks that I kept indoors under a lamp until they were about 1.5 weeks when they started hopping out of my homemade brooder. Knowing a bit about chickens, I knew if they had a real chicken mama, she'd have them out foraging all day from nearly the start. As an experiment, I took the whole flock of 22 out to the lawn and sat own. They were overjoyed! There was much happy fluttering and chasing and, sure enough, those new babies started scratching and pecking. They stayed together beautifully, calling me with plaintiff little peeps if they happened to wander off too far. I realized I was more if a landmark to stay near than a guardian and I moved our foraging to a flower bed against the side of the house where there was open soil for scratching and bushed overhead for cover. I gradually came to leave them alone, knowing they wouldn't wander, for an hour or two at a time. First of all, at two weeks old, they were HAPPY. Observation made it abundantly clear that they were in their element outside and not in a box. In the evening times and during the day when I needed to go out, i put them back inside with the lamp.

They didn't want it at all and I would come home to find a very "cooped up" bunch of chicks and very few near the lamp. At two weeks, the lamp burned out prompting me to eliminate it altogether. At TWO WEEKS!

They turn three weeks old tomorrow and are only indoors at night. If I am gone, I confine them to their coop. When I am home, they are foraging freely in one if the flower beds. At three weeks old!

So I'm reading other mama hen/hatchery chick stories and folks saying they must be under light until fully feathered at six weeks. Meanwhile, my flock is browsing in the rhodies by the house! They have wing and tail feathers and are just getting breast feathers.

Lady at tractor supply last night scolded me when I told her what I was up to at home. "Something will get them", she said, "and then you will be sorry". . Naturally, she filled me with doubt...

But. Could there be a "less-orthodox" way of raising up chicks that does not require sacrificing space and air quality indoors while at the same time creating healthy happy chicks?

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

While I, personally, would not leave them unattended outside of a protected foraging area (meaning fully enclosed run), these are your birds. This is simply because they are less able to evade capture/consumption than a larger, more mature bird. It's a matter of doing a risk assessment and determining what sort of risk *you* are comfortable taking with your birds.
You are fine - you are letting your birds tell you what they can/can't handle and, even more importantly, you are listening. There are all sorts of rules and books about what you have to do, etc - but chickens don't read books or know these rules

My birds come off the light well before 6 weeks - they were out, in an unheated coop, at 5 weeks and went through a freak snow-storm and sub-freezing temperatures just fine.
There is no one right or wrong way to do this - as long as your birds are happy and healthy keep doing what you are doing.

 

[Bethel3330]

I second that

 

[rottnwarrior]

I agree. Chickens know if they are hot or cold. If you raise chickens by the book... You'll go nuts. Let them do what they do. Many so called chicken experts get their info from other people who get their info from other people who get their info from.... You get the point. Remember playing the telephone game in school? It starts out as one piece of info and ends up something totally different by the end and people are positive they've got it right. One example... Potato peels. Put up a post about giving them to your birds and people will go nuts! My birds love them. Your birds will tell you what they don't like. Forget what other people say you can't do.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You’ll find that with a whole lot of the rules of thumb on this forum. They are intended for people with absolutely no experience with chickens and are intended to keep practically anyone out of trouble no matter where they live climate-wise, how lousy their facilities are, or how they mess up. As a result they are extremely conservative, really overkill for the majority of us. Still people with no experience need a place to start and those rules give them a safe place.

I’ve turned daytime heat off at 2 days and nighttime heat off at 5 days in a hot summer. I’ve kept heat on them until 5 weeks in winter in my brooder in the coop. Let your chickens tell you what they need like you are doing.

 

[vehve]

Guidelines are a way for beginners to not screw up, they're meant to be idiot proof ways to get something done. Usually with a bit of common sense you can figure out which ones to follow and which ones you don't need to care that much about. But for some people, this isn't an option, so that's why you need guidelines.

I've always wondered what prompted the warning label on a chainsaw to "not use near genitals", shouldn't this be sort of obvious? Or the garage door my friends parents ordered from the States. The instruction manual was only half the size of the book that explained all the ways not to use the door.

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

 

[rottnwarrior]

^^^^ yes. What they said.

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

I think that raising chickens is very much like bringing home your first baby. That first one you read all of the book nit pick and second guess. By the time #2 comes along you begin to realize that they aren't quite as delicate as you had been told and start to relax your style.

I am into my third year of chickens and after watching my broody's as the OP described I realize that all of the guidelines are just that.
I also have observed that my pampered babies (the ones I raise in a brooder) are larger and feather out faster than the broody's babies. This tells me that my heat lamp and nutrition are doing their job. I have created my own set of guidelines that works best for my particular set up and birds. My last batch of hatchery stock had the lamp off by 4 weeks (in the winter) and I started integrating them at around 6 weeks with the full grown flock. This worked well because of my setup but I would not necessarily recommend this for anyone else.

I have had losses in free-ranging and expect to lose babies as well. This is just part of it, and is the chance you take when you let the birds do what they do best. In 120 birds that I have raised I have lost 7 to predators and 2 to illness, to me this justifies happy healthy birds and a low feed bill!

@Belletower raise your brood in the way that works best for you and your birds.

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

I've always wondered what prompted the warning label on a chainsaw to "not use near genitals", shouldn't this be sort of obvious?