Hmong Babies

[Disheygirl]

I’ve brooded six bunches of chicks - far from an expert - but my sixth group is three Hmong that I hatched.

They are not down with brooder life and are obsessed with me. They’re in an XL soft sided dog crate and god forbid if they don’t get out to run around the sunroom 3x a day, using me as a tree. One will stand on top of the heat plate and scream for hours until I let her out.

Their little personalities are just so different than I’m used to. Brooder = boring. They’re ready for the real world! Anyone else raise these guys?

 

[SnackMeat]

I wouldn't do this with rare breeds, but our young flock had various hatches so everyone was used to babies. The last few hatches, from day three onward, we would let them free range with the other young ones (10 weeks or less.) however, we had the time to save them when they started shrieking that "predators here I am!" shriek, typically when they got too far from another chicken or climbed something and didn't know how to get down.

We recently stopped because we have chain link for the yard fence that the small ones could get through and it was adding 20+ minutes to getting everyone in to bed and settled from free range time. Now, the little ones are confined to enclosed run area during the day until they are too big to go through the chain link. We do have some heritage breeds at 11 weeks that can still squeeze through if they want but they at least know the mealworm crinkle bag sound. The chicks would just keep going further away like they were solo exploring Mars.


Not saying this is what you should do (and you should have Corid on hand because we started seeing problems two weeks onward and sometimes caught it too late.) but it depends on your flock and your area and the weather. Even when it was cooler back in May, whatever new hatchers would get maybe fifteen minutes of run around time with supervision and then go in because they were cold. But probably week 1-2 they would get let out with everyone else. The zoomers would zoom, but most of them largely stayed by the compost pile, or at the doorway of the outbuilding where their interim coop space is.


If you have an enclosed run then you could try slow integration and supervised visits. Just to let the chicks run off steam since they haven't found their "walk" settings. But once again, Corid on hand because of access to the outside world can increase coccidiosis even if they naturally carry it.