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ChickenChick46

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Jul 18, 2025
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Hi everyone! I'm new here and will be getting my first chickens in September. I've ordered 4 BBS Orpingtons from Meyer. 3 females and I roo. I'm so excited, and I want things to be perfect for them when they arrive.

What all do y'all recommend to have on hand? I'll obviously have a brooder, brooder plate, feeder, waterer, and I plan to use shavings as bedding. I am going to provide a small roosting bar as well. Should I give them electrolytes and/or probiotics in their water? What about anything for emergencies? Meds or first aid things?

Thanks so much for any advice! I just want to do things right for them.
 
Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.

The first thing you should already have on hand is your coop and run built and ready to go. He needs 4 sq ft of floor space, one linear ft of roost space and as close to 1 sq ft of permanently open ventilation per bird in the coop as you can manage.

The run should offer 15 sq ft per bird and have a lot of things in there for them to interact with like branches secured to the walls, stump arrangements, old wood stools or chairs, pallets leaning up against the wall, you get the picture. It is also a good idea to have a good layer of dry organic matter for litter to keep things as odor free as possible.

When I have chicks shipped to me I always start them off with electrolytes in the water and leave the lights on for the first 3 days so they can eat and drink for 72 hours if they want to. You need to show them the water source immediately upon coming out of the box.

Start them on a good quality chick starter and you can leave them on that for life if you want to. When they start getting to the point they may start laying eggs, put out one or two containers of oyster shell and just always have them topped off year-round. And they're set for life.
 
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Thank you so much for the info! My husband has gotten our coop and run ready. He's been working so hard! They'll also have access to a very soon to be fenced in garden area with greens, herbs and flowers. I've done a lot of research on plants that are toxic to make sure I don't have any of those around. I've also got my veggies that are for our family's use in another location so they don't eat them.

We live in a rural area with lots of woods, so they'll only be allowed outside of their secure area if I'm with them. But I'll make sure to add the things you mentioned in their run so they've got plenty to interact with.
 
Hello and Welcome to Back Yard Chicken community here.

So glad you join us and it is exciting that you will be getting your first flock of chickens...:celebrate:wee

Just be warned that there is such a thing as chicken math and I am saying it from a personal experience of being a chicken addict.😄

Life is good with chickens!❤️
 
muddy75 said:
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Thank you so much!! I'm still getting it all figured out.
SkyAJK said:
Hello and Welcome to Back Yard Chicken community here.

So glad you join us and it is exciting that you will be getting your first flock of chickens...:celebrate:wee

Just be warned that there is such a thing as chicken math and I am saying it from a personal experience of being a chicken addict.😄

Life is good with chickens!❤️
Click to expand...
Haha yes!! I am very much preparing to be a victim of chicken math! My neighbor raises brahmas, but she's got some other breeds too. She's also got heritage turkeys, from which I've already committed to taking 2 poults! She keeps saying, "I've got this chick and that chick in the incubator. 'X' days to go! You can have them." Lol! I'll cave and take her up on it one day! I started with the BBS Orpingtons, but there are so many I want to try!

Thank you for the warm welcome! I'm happy to be learning from everyone. I've been reading posts like crazy. Some of my favorites are the gender posts. I'm educating myself on chicken identification!
 
Hi! Orpingtons should be a great breed to start with! I'm definitely a sucker for blue and black chickens. I had good luck with ordering from Meyer last year, too.

It's nice you and your husband are putting in a lot of work to get them all set up! I hope we get to hear about their progress and see pictures!

Thanks for joining and welcome to BackYard Chickens!
 
Hello and welcome :welcome
If you have a neighbor that is an experienced chicken owner half your battle is over especially since your coop is done.

Lean heavily on your neighbor as well as BYC for advice and watch a lot of YouTube videos. I mean a lot on different topics when it comes to chickens.

There is a barn yard full of advice out there, not all is necessarily good. You will, after watching several dozen's of videos start to find various you tube people who really know what their talking about and quickly dismiss the ones who are just parroting from one of these sources with their own twist.

I started out in your shoes back in Feb and am just now bringing it all together with my chick order in. I watched a ton of YouTube, asked a lot of questions and read a lot of stuff here in BYC.

Best of luck to you
Stay clucky :celebrate
 

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