How much research did you do, before buying chicks?

[outdoorlady]

Took me about a year as well. I visited with brother-in-law and family and chics...Talked with my Dad. Read an old magazine from Successful Farming, back in the late 30's or early 40's. (Dad still had them lol) and I wanted to know how feeding and keeping chickens changed over the years. Read extensively how chickens were kept before large operations and mass production came into being. Got lots of advice from amish friends, and chicken farmer from my local mill.

Then when i felt ready to give it a go...it has been good ever since. Haven't had too bad a time of it...even though i was a bit worried about hard winters...but that too has panned out nicely...

 

[A.T. Hagan]

We had chickens when I was a boy but I hadn't fooled with them for some years so I bought Chickens In Your Backyard from a local bookstore (back in the pre-Internet days). Good book for someone looking to start a small backyard flock. I'd still recommend it today.

 

[pdsavage]

About 6 months way back about 10 + years ago,had to sell all those as we where a poor young couple raising 5 kids and the truck broke down so...
I have a picture of the last ones to go....

 

[bt03]

I did no research at all. My mother thought it would be a good idea to stop at a little feed store on the way home from a business trip and buy 3 chicks for my daughter. She asked us to come over after work, which me like a dummy I did, and she thrust this box of chicks at my daughter and said "look what pets you have now!" I could have died because I knew they had to go home with us since she had a dog that hated any kind of bird and anything that peeped was always automatically in his mouth. So I took them all home, did a quick google search, found BYC and have been researching them for the last year and a half.

Unfortunately for us our whole chicken experience is a lot of trial and error, but luckily we have more hens than roosters and only one chicken has had to come and live inside. We have had no major complications except that when I finally did buy 4 new chicks for our flock I mistakenly bought meat birds and had 2 die on me before I figured out what I was doing wrong. I bought about 29 EE chicks shortly after the meaties and I researched my ducks for 3 months before jumping into that venture.

Ours has been a lot of trial and error and now I am helping to guide 3 different friends into research because they like my flock and are wanting some of heir own. I always let people know that they were not my intention and I wish I had had time to learn about them before getting them, but now that I have them I wouldn't give them back even for a llama