Janie1968: I am hoping so, they seem to be growing at record rates right at the moment
LOL. I read up on the whizbang and may try to save up for one next year! I really do want to raise enough meaties that I will never have to buy chicken in the store again and we eat at least 1 chicken a week!
CAjerseychick: I am sorry I didn't see your post earlier! Unfortunately, I don't have alot of experience with raising chicks so I wouldn't have been able to give you a good answer. I hope your chicks did fine this weekend?
On the same note, we have had to separate some chicks due to pecking and since we only have the one EcoGlow, the pecked chicks are in a plastic tote with just each other for heat and they seem to be doing just fine.
I am not sure what caused the pecking to start, but all 3 of the injured chicks are the cornish rock meaties. I think what happened is that we were extremely busy this weekend and didn't get to check the chicks as often as normal.
We finally started building the chicken house and were outside all day, came in for lunch and I checked them, they seemed fine, but when we came back in that evening they had knocked over their water and were almost out of feed. I had changed to a trough feeder and they (nor I) like it very much so tomorrow my husband is stopping on his way home from work and getting a gallon size waterer and feeder AND picking up our bigger boxes!
We got the floor done on the new hen house and will start on the framing tomorrow. I still have to buy windows, tin for the roof and siding and am hoping to be at the point of picking those up this coming weekend (we will see how it goes).
My new EcoGlow arrived today, so tomorrow I have to clean up the old one and get it sent back. But like I said earlier, I am doubtful most of them really need it at this point. However, some of the laying chicks are still pretty small so I am going to keep it in with them until they go outside at which time I will be using it for our new order.
Which I have changed... again!
Having "housing" problems with this first batch has made it not quite as enjoyable as I was hoping for, so I don't want as many chicks this next time, so I went from 23 chicks to 12.... and no ducks! I decided ducks are more a spring adventure (thinking easter time LOL)
I am still planning on ordering a batch of meat chicks later this year (when it is not so hot out) but before I do that, we are building a better brooder (I want it big enough to house 30 chicks until 4 weeks old without overcrowding... not sure how big that needs to be LOL, and I want to be able to divide it into 2 sections if I need/want to seperate chicks or have 2 different batches brooding... I want it portable too and thinking about putting it on wheels. Yeah, I know, I am not asking for much LOL, wait until I tell my husband my plans
hahaha).
All future chicks, once we get the big coop built, will go out to the grow-out coop at 3-4 weeks, which will be our current little coop modified to be better suited for young chickens (we are going to expand the run area, etc). It is right next to the big coop and the runs will share a fence section so the hens can get used to seeing the chicks so there will hopefully be less drama when they are big enough to safely free-range and/or be integrated into the flock.
Instead of building a portable brooder for in the house, I am considering building a permanent one in the new coop, either under one of the poop boards or over my supply area... again, a "wait and see" situation, but either way, I am not doing cardboard boxes for 3 or more weeks ever again!
I have read about using a kids swimming pool, which would work great until the chicks are a couple weeks old, then all hell would break loose every time you had to remove the lid for cleaning - I know because we have had to change our cleaning routine dramatically - otherwise we would have birds flying all over the house every time we fed and watered them! It had turned into a chicken round-up rodeo LOL.
