- May 4, 2011
- 10
- 0
- 22
Howdy all, pretty new to all this chicken ranchin. Hardest part was talking the wife into getting chickens in the first place. After a ton of googlin and reading here we jumped in for our first purchase. Our initial plan was to mail order but the timing never panned out. Option two was to head down to the local feed store and buy some pullets, the chicks arrived at the store but by the time I had arrived they were sold out. Seems like folks are preparing for the apocolypse and had bought em out. Option three was the local ACE hardware store, they were expecting shipment in a few days. We arrived early to beat out the end of days crowd as they tend to sleep in on the weekends. Our two year old son was enthrawled with the 600 chicks they had. They had 200 RIR and 400 leghorns. The deal they had going was that you buy a bag of feed (13 bucks), you get 5 chicks for free. We needed a dozen chicks so we bought 5 bags of feed and got 15 birds, opted for all RIR's. I ended up buying a waterer and a feeder so all told my initial cost was about 60 bucks. Oh, and also got a heat lamp. Still around 60 bucks.
Got everybody home, and put the chicks in a giant cooler with some leaves in the bottom, added heat, food and water. The little guys loved it. Oh, so important note here, all the chicks were straight run, will get to that in a moment. A buddy of mine wanted chicks too so he came by and snagged 7 of em. He already had a coop and in lieu of his help/expertise in building mine he garnered 7 chicks. Pretty good deal for me.....
So two almost three weeks have gone by now. We have built the coop, I still need to add nesting boxes and a back access door and a few other minor things. But the birds have spent thier last few nights out in the coop. I live in NW FL so it has been pretty warm and the chicks have pretty much feathered out. We had a cold front come though last night and its going to get down to 50F tonight so I am going to run heat out to em for the next few nights. They seem to be really enjoying themselves so far.
Ok, so back to the straight run.... I have been trying to figure out what I have as far as sex goes for the last few days. I know its a little early to tell but I can start to see some little bumps on the back of a few of thier legs which I take to be spurs, it looks like I have 3 roosters out 8 chicks.
So... This is a little bit of a dilema for me, I wanted all hens for the eggs. But now I am thinking about breeding as well. If I have a roo may as well use em. So if I have 3 roos, what do I do? Should I just keep one and trade the other two for hens if able?
And regardless do I need to seperate the roo(s) from the hens when they get to laying age?
These are the only questions I have for now as things are going pretty smooth so far, I will post up some pics when able.
The peep master.
Got everybody home, and put the chicks in a giant cooler with some leaves in the bottom, added heat, food and water. The little guys loved it. Oh, so important note here, all the chicks were straight run, will get to that in a moment. A buddy of mine wanted chicks too so he came by and snagged 7 of em. He already had a coop and in lieu of his help/expertise in building mine he garnered 7 chicks. Pretty good deal for me.....
So two almost three weeks have gone by now. We have built the coop, I still need to add nesting boxes and a back access door and a few other minor things. But the birds have spent thier last few nights out in the coop. I live in NW FL so it has been pretty warm and the chicks have pretty much feathered out. We had a cold front come though last night and its going to get down to 50F tonight so I am going to run heat out to em for the next few nights. They seem to be really enjoying themselves so far.
Ok, so back to the straight run.... I have been trying to figure out what I have as far as sex goes for the last few days. I know its a little early to tell but I can start to see some little bumps on the back of a few of thier legs which I take to be spurs, it looks like I have 3 roosters out 8 chicks.
So... This is a little bit of a dilema for me, I wanted all hens for the eggs. But now I am thinking about breeding as well. If I have a roo may as well use em. So if I have 3 roos, what do I do? Should I just keep one and trade the other two for hens if able?
And regardless do I need to seperate the roo(s) from the hens when they get to laying age?
These are the only questions I have for now as things are going pretty smooth so far, I will post up some pics when able.
The peep master.
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