Newbie in Delaware

[Debbie292d]

Hiya, Crissy, and welcome to BYC!

Very smart to come here before getting chickens!

You'll need a coop, and we have a great Coop forum full of coops our members built. You can also look on Facebook Marketplace for a shed or coop in your area that you can fix up. A prebuilt coop will make you unhappy in the long run, so hope you can come up with something good!

Also, we have a Learning Center where there are oodles of articles written by our members about caring for chicks and chickens.

Where you get chicks depends what you want them for. Just eggs, eggs, and meat, 4-H shows, etc.

We're glad you're here!

 

[fldiver97]

Prices vary for 1 day old chicks. We have Amish that sell produce and rabbits and chickens (usually starting in spring) fairly inexpensive. Production breeds, EEs and some other common breeds are usually a few dollars a chick. You can also order from a hatchery - other than breed they also generally charge less for males or straight run chicks. You have to pay for shipping though unless you’re close and they do pickup. Sometimes farmers sell chicks. I got my first chicks from a hobby farmer that bred heritage cattle and chickens, drove an hour each way to get them but he had healthy and well cared for animals.
He didn’t charge much
You can also look at the forum for buy-sell-trade here to see if someone sells what you want.
Sometimes someone will sell grown chickens or entire flocks for a variety of reasons. Facebook Marketplace also posts chickens for sale.
My ‘cheapest’ one day old chicks were less than $3, my most expensive ones were $30+ and taxes and shipping but I wanted those breeds and because I lived in town at that time I wasn’t allowed to have roosters.

ETA : in spring and fall TSC and various farm stores have ‘ chick days’. Usually a variety of breeds, some straight run and some sexed. Beware that sexing in most breeds of day old chicks is about 90% accurate according to the hatcheries. Some breeds have chicks were male and females look different