My fellow BYCers, I need some help. It seems that Chicken math has really taken plant at my house. We started out with a plan to have 4 pullets to add to the 3 - 4 that adopted us (eh, I think it was just because we fed them). Well, we ended up with 12 (one of which has disappeared and we can't find the beautiful thing). So now we have 15 chickens in our keeping. Here is where the chicken math comes in... my lovely husband had gotten the chicken fever worse that I have. He found someone who is attending the local university for agriculture and farm management. Well, this lovely lady is *giving away* longhorn chicks. I suppose she just had to see them hatch for some experiment we will be picking them up when they are just hours old. Oh, and by them I mean 24 of them... So after that long (and I am sure very boring) story I have a few questions... How much space should I have per chick or what size brooder should be used to house that many chickens? I do not wish for any cannibalism as I am a sucker for the small fry (or nugget in this case) and the small fry dying and being eaten by his siblings is ummm... not right on both accounts. Also, how many of these 24 will (statistically) make it through to laying / whatever I do with the roosters? They are Leghorns... what do you recommend doing with the roosters? I really do not prefer to have a lot of roosters running around as we have 3 in our original batch that will make it to the freezer whenever they make it large enough to do such.. Thank you all for your help! You all have been a tremendously fantastic resource..
In a brooder, since they will get big, we had one square foot per chick. I had 8 so it's a different story! Now, since you have 24, I would go smaller, but not too much. But you also always can move them into a bigger brooder. I would go big.
