Welcome to BackYard Chickens! No questions are dumb as we all have started from the beginning when learning how to raise chickens. We have learned a lot in a year and a half of chicken and chick raising. I don't know of an exact measurement per chicken when building your coop. I would make sure they had enough room in there to move around well. (especially if they don't get to free range.)A place for nesting boxes when they get old enough to lay, and just make sure it is predator proof. When starting out with chickens we found dug out areas around our pen where something was trying to dig in there. My husband stapled wire around the bottom and nailed it to the ground. Now, when something digs it can't get anywhere b/c it can't dig through the chicken wire. You can order chicks through Mcmurray hatchery and you can order as many or as little as you want. If you order pullets then you get all feamles. They are a few cents higher but if you order straight run then you can end up with some roosters. You can check with some other hatcheries like Cackle hatchery, Ideal Poultry, Strombergs, Meyer Hatchery. Feed and seed stores and
Tractor Supply have chicks for sale right now. I would not order any less than 6. New chicks need warmth and depend on each others body heat to stay warm in those boxes until you can get them home. Shipment process is stressful for them and it could even be a possibility that you lose a couple. We keep our new chicks in a large plastic stoarge tub with a brooder lamp and a 100watt light bulb. We have found that the 250 watt heat lamp bulbs are just too hot unless you have them hanging really high. It needs to be 95 deg. for the first week of life and then you can decrease it by 5 deg. increments each week until they are ready to go outside. We put pine shavings in our box as bedding ( they poop a lot and this keeps it cleaner in there.) Then all you need is Chick starter food and a waterer. They have a Chick starter kit with everything in it right now at
Tractor Supply for 19.99.
You do not have to have a Rooster unless you want fertilized eggs. Hens lay eggs without roosters. All roosters do is fertilize them if you want to hatch your own baby chicks. We hatch our own chicks so we have a couple of roosters. If you are not going to hatch your own chicks and only want eggs for eating then order pullets when ordering. Roosters to us are more trouble than they are worth. We have one that we like and recently had to give one away because he got aggressive with our kids. They can get horomonal and they are protective over their hens and some of our hens had started laying and he went crazy and tried to attack us when we went near them or the eggs. If it weren't for us incubating our own chicks then I wouldn't have a Rooster.
What do you mean by a nasty surprise in the egg? Do you mean a developing chick? If so then you won't have to worry about that unless you have a rooster mating with your hens. Even so, a hen has to go broody ( meaning she is ready to be a mom and saves eggs in her nesting box to lay on) She has to sit on the eggs for 21 days until the chicks are ready to hatch. If you gather your eggs fresh everyday then you won't have anything nasty in there, just fresh egg yolk and whites. My 10 year old son was the one that wanted chickens when we decided to get them I was hesitant about eating the eggs but they are so fresh and better than anything store bought. If you crack open a store bought egg and one of your fresh ones then you can see how much better your own eggs look and tastes.
As far as raising chicks and ducks together, I'm not sure but hopefully someone else can answer that for you. Good luck with your chicks! If you ever have any questions feel free to message me. If you go on some of the hatcheries web sites, you can request free catalogs. They have colorful pictures of all their breeds and descriptions about them. It is useful when deciding what breeds of chickens you want. We started out with Buff orpingtons ( good egg layers and very friendly) We now have 3 buff orpingtons, 3 rhode island reds ( also a good egg layer), 5 white leghorns, 6 old english bantams ( these are small chickens and our kids just like to play with them) We also have 29 buff orpington chicks and 3 rhode island red chicks.
