I've been raising chickens for just over a year now. And I've managed to jump in with both feet as I now have over 50 birds.
I've seen lots of cool incubators, brooders, and coops shown here and gotten tons of ideas. But I've never seen anyone's whole system of managing their poultry from egg to adult. I'd especially like to hear how (or if) people plan ahead to manage their flocks once the eggs/chicks are laid/purchased.
I currently seem to do well on the hatching and initial brooding. And I'm pretty proud of my coop/run setup for my adult chickens. It is managing the movement from brooder to coop I am not doing well at. I'll admit my planning is pretty poor too at the moment.
Here is what I do so far:
1. I have a sportsman cabinet incubator that works great to get me from egg to chick.
2. I then have several large aquariums re-purposed from raising fish that I brood the young chicks up to about week 3.
3. The chicks them move to a large 700gal plastic stock tank where they stay until about week 6.
(This is the point where I struggle a bit in my planning process)
4. I have built an 8X8 hoop coop to move the 6 week olds into to get used to being outside. This works great until my next batch of 6 week olds are ready to go outside. The current residents are 9-10 weeks old, but not ready for prime time with the adults. I am not sure what type of setup will work best to get me from hoop coop to adult coop. I think at this point I'd like to be able to separate boys and girls too.
5. Adults are kept in the barn. They are in pens that are inside, with pop holes to get out to runs that are outside the barn. This is working great for me. Good shelter from wind and predators, and decent room to move around.
I'd love to hear how others handle growout of their birds. Just from reading various threads on here, it seems to be a pretty common struggling point where people either end up keeping their chicks inside much longer than they would prefer, or desperately asking advice on how to integrate birds into their flock as soon as possible.
I'd also like to hear some people describe their growout planning process too. I know I thought I had everything planned out on where the chicks would go as they grew, but now I'm seeing the holes in my plans. I would probably be all right if I only raised one batch of chicks, but since I did multiple waves of hatching, it is catching up to me now.
I've seen lots of cool incubators, brooders, and coops shown here and gotten tons of ideas. But I've never seen anyone's whole system of managing their poultry from egg to adult. I'd especially like to hear how (or if) people plan ahead to manage their flocks once the eggs/chicks are laid/purchased.
I currently seem to do well on the hatching and initial brooding. And I'm pretty proud of my coop/run setup for my adult chickens. It is managing the movement from brooder to coop I am not doing well at. I'll admit my planning is pretty poor too at the moment.
Here is what I do so far:
1. I have a sportsman cabinet incubator that works great to get me from egg to chick.
2. I then have several large aquariums re-purposed from raising fish that I brood the young chicks up to about week 3.
3. The chicks them move to a large 700gal plastic stock tank where they stay until about week 6.
(This is the point where I struggle a bit in my planning process)
4. I have built an 8X8 hoop coop to move the 6 week olds into to get used to being outside. This works great until my next batch of 6 week olds are ready to go outside. The current residents are 9-10 weeks old, but not ready for prime time with the adults. I am not sure what type of setup will work best to get me from hoop coop to adult coop. I think at this point I'd like to be able to separate boys and girls too.
5. Adults are kept in the barn. They are in pens that are inside, with pop holes to get out to runs that are outside the barn. This is working great for me. Good shelter from wind and predators, and decent room to move around.
I'd love to hear how others handle growout of their birds. Just from reading various threads on here, it seems to be a pretty common struggling point where people either end up keeping their chicks inside much longer than they would prefer, or desperately asking advice on how to integrate birds into their flock as soon as possible.
I'd also like to hear some people describe their growout planning process too. I know I thought I had everything planned out on where the chicks would go as they grew, but now I'm seeing the holes in my plans. I would probably be all right if I only raised one batch of chicks, but since I did multiple waves of hatching, it is catching up to me now.
