Letting chicks out on the ground

[Tinwife]

How old should my chicks be before we let them out to roam around on the fenced in ground?

 

[Cloverleaf Farm]

That's a topic with many different viewpoints. Depends on where you live, your climate, and what you're feeding them. For artificially incubated chicks, I don't let them on the ground until they are near maturity, and that's with medicated feed, because of the possibility of coccidiosis. I just moved to a drier climate though, so I probably will be able to let them out sooner. For chicks that are broody hatched, they are out on the ground from day 1.

 

[azygous]

I brood my chicks in the run under a heating pad cave system. They are on the "ground", so to speak, from just a few days of age. They have their own secure pen so they aren't mingling with the adults just yet.

The three chicks are in the pen in the background, along with a crippled hen who lives in the rear compartment and sleeps in the dog crate. The chicks have their heating pad cave to sleep in beside the crate. The two compartments are partitioned off with a low fence of deer netting. The "ground" is masonry sand, and I put clean sand in for the chicks.

Their pen is fenced off from the main run, which is in the foreground.You can see the chicks' heating pad cave next to the adult hen's crate, separated by a low fence. The temperature are immaterial since the cave is all the warmth the chicks require. They're five days old right now.

 

[Tinwife]

We haven't let them out yet they are a week old today. I'm not home but my daughter thinks one chick is limping. I told her there wasn't anything we could do, just wait and see. She's not happy with my answer.