Hey! I'm new and have a question

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amjamm said:
(1) Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens? I got my first chickens about 6 months ago.

(2) How many chickens do you have right now? I currently have three chickens

(3) What breeds do you have? When they were sold to us, we were told that they were pekin bantam chooks but I don't believe one of them is because she doesn't have the same feathered feet or fluffy tail feathers that the others have.

(4) What are your favorite aspects of raising backyard chickens? I love watching them scratch and peck around the garden, also their cute little eggs.

(5) What are some of your other hobbies? I love reading and walking my dog.

(6) Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share. I have another cat and dog.

(7) Bonus: How did you find BYC, how long have you known about BYC, and what made you finally join our awesome community? :D I found here by just looking up chicken websites to help me.

I just had a quick question for anyone who is still reading (Thank you!). My pekins can get broody quite easily (one is at the moment) and we were thinking that next time one of the chooks goes clucky, we buy some fertilized eggs and pop them under her and she raise them. We live in the suburbs, so we probably wouldn't be able to keep the chicks once they grow up and we would just sell them. I'm concerned that the other hens may pick on/hurt the little chicks. I've heard that having enough room would help them stay safe, we have about 8 square feet inside the chook coop and over about 90 square feet for them outside. They are just little bantams, so they don't take up a lot of room anyway. Does anyone have any advice?
Thank you for reading this
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We have a huge run, because we have mostly large fowl, but we have four bantams, and they all do fine, three of them are in with the large chickens, and they are around 3 large roosters, and it all goes wells!
As for the third bantam, he is in another pen. How many do you have?
 
Hi, welcome to the flock. For full-sized hens it is recommended that you allow about four square feet of space inside the coop per bird, not counting the nests. For bantams I think it is about half that but I am not positive. Let me tag @BantyChooks and see what he says. You don't want to crowd your coop or you will have problems that could result in sick or injured chickens or chicks. You absolutely must make arrangements to keep mama hen and her chicks safely inside the coop, at least at night, until they are several weeks old, to protect them from predators, and they will not go up a ramp in their early weeks.
 
BigBlueHen53 said:
Hi, welcome to the flock. For full-sized hens it is recommended that you allow about four square feet of space inside the coop per bird, not counting the nests. For bantams I think it is about half that but I am not positive. Let me tag @BantyChooks and see what he says. You don't want to crowd your coop or you will have problems that could result in sick or injured chickens or chicks. You absolutely must make arrangements to keep mama hen and her chicks safely inside the coop, at least at night, until they are several weeks old, to protect them from predators, and they will not go up a ramp in their early weeks.
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Thank you, do you think that mama chicken would let me pick up her babies and pop them into the nesting box of the coop at night? There are many foxes where I live, so they would be quite vulnerable if they didn't go into the coop at night. Or would it be easier for me to set up a different temporary coop for them to go to at night?
 
amjamm said:
Thank you, do you think that mama chicken would let me pick up her babies and pop them into the nesting box of the coop at night? There are many foxes where I live, so they would be quite vulnerable if they didn't go into the coop at night. Or would it be easier for me to set up a different temporary coop for them to go to at night?
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A separate coop/run would be the safest bet but that’s just me being cautious... I let my broody bantam Cochin hatch 4 eggs for me and brought everyone inside (hen and chicks) and gave them our guest bathroom for the first 3 weeks just to give them a head start without the other girls bullying them... everyone is now fully integrated back into the flock after a 4 day reintroduction window where I kept momma and the chicks (that are now almost her size already 🤣) in a XL dog kennel inside the run during the day and inside the coop at night (we have coyotes and mountain lions out here at night so our coop is Fort Knox being a converted trailer and all)
 

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