Possible Outdoor Places To Raise Chicks???

[Ridgerunner]

Hi y'all!
I have a question about raising chicks:
I'm going to be brooding chicks soon, but is it possible to raise chicks outside somewhere???
The fam doesn't want the odor in the house so I'm trying to figure out alternatives to raising them indoors.
Would love any advice on this!

I'll repeat a lot of what has been said but hopefully add a bit. The basic requirements include appropriate food, clean water, and protection from predators. You can provide those anywhere. They also need protection from the environment. This includes keeping them dry and out of a wind. This can be more challenging outside.

A huge factor is temperature. I find the best brooders have a spot that is warm enough in the coolest of temperatures and a spot that is cool enough in the warmest temperatures. Either too much heat or too much cold are both dangerous. This isn't too hard to manage if you are brooding in a climate controlled area, but if you are outside the temperature swings can make it challenging. I've seen my temperatures go from below freezing to the 70's Fahrenheit in a day or so when I have chicks in my brooder in the coop. I keep one end of my brooder toasty but it's large enough and well enough ventilated that the far end can cool off as it will. I've had ice in the far end of the brooder, the chicks stay in the warm part. When the weather heats up they go to the cool end. Even straight out of the incubator I find they can manage that by themselves if given a choice.

I'll include a photo of my 3' x 6' brooder built into the coop. In really cold weather I wrap it more. I vary the wattage of the heat lamp based on the time of the year.

The chicks don't care where the heat comes from. People use all kinds of different heat sources from heat lamps, incandescent lamps, heat plates, heating pads, hovers, various reptile heaters, and more. They can all work if set up properly, any of them can have issues if not set up properly. If you use a heat lamp I strongly suggest you toss that clamp and hold it in place with wire or chain. Do not use string or plastic that can burn or melt but use wire or chain that cannot fail. That clamp can be knocked loose. If you really secure the heat lamp you greatly reduce the potential for a fire.

Many people put their brooders in a basement, an attached or detached garage or an outbuilding like a shed. Electricity is extremely helpful to provide heat. If you run an extension chord out there be careful. Some people build special outdoor brooders. My preference for that would be to set it in the coop, the run, or at least next to the run so the adults can see them. That helps with integration.

I'm not one to believe in magic numbers, whether that is square feet per chicken in brooders, coop, or runs, length of roost space, hen to rooster rations, size of nests, really not much of anything to do with chickens. Often numbers are thrown out on here as if they are a law of nature. In my opinion they are not for a couple of reasons. Some are tossed out as general guidelines, meant to keep people out of trouble no matter how poorly things are built or managed. For many people these are overkill, for some maybe not quite enough. On that square feet of coop space for chickens, I've seen anywhere from 1 sq ft to 15 sq ft per chicken given on this forum as the right amount. Which one do you believe? Another problem with magic numbers is that we all keep chickens for different goals, in different climates, different flock make-ups, different ages, bantam versus full-sized, and many other differences. It's no surprise that different numbers work for different ones of us. If you follow the link in my signature below you can see some of my thoughts about space for chickens.

I don't know enough about your flock or how you manage them to be able to tell you whether what you have and what you are doing will work long term. I don't know how old yours are. In Southern California you don't have to deal with snow and freezing weather, that can make a difference. I find the more room I have the fewer behavioral problems I have, the less hard I have to work, and the more flexibility I have to handle things that come up. All these things can reduce my stress level but I think the extra flexibility is what I value the most.

Integration is one of the things that can trigger a need for more space. You have four chickens in that area and it's working for now. It may forever. If you try to add more chickens, even after they are integrated, it is possible you will run out of room. I don't know your plans for how many chickens you eventually expect to have but the way I'd approach your situation would be to build a new coop big enough for all of them and use what you have as an outdoor brooder. It can also be used to isolate an injured chicken or for whatever comes up. It adds flexibility to what you can do.

 

[LCsAChickenLover]

Just wanted to chime in. You have been lucky that your four birds have been getting along in their current set up. But more than likely when you add younger birds, all hell will break loose.
It’s much too small and you will feel horrible when you see the torture and abuse your littles will endure from the older birds.
I highly suggest expanding your set up or upgrade to a larger coop/run.
TRUST ME I’m on coop #3 and wish I would have factored in Chicken Math when making that first coop

I too have raised chicks outdoors on the covered back patio and against the house. I used a dog pen, tarp and cardboard on the sides for drafts

 

[3KillerBs]

My preference for that would be to set it in the coopp, the run, or at least next to the run so the adults can see them. That helps with integration.

I credit this advice (and similar tips from others), for the very smooth integration of two batches of chicks this year.

 

[AvocadoAbi]

I'll repeat a lot of what has been said but hopefully add a bit. The basic requirements include appropriate food, clean water, and protection from predators. You can provide those anywhere. They also need protection from the environment. This includes keeping them dry and out of a wind. This can be more challenging outside.

A huge factor is temperature. I find the best brooders have a spot that is warm enough in the coolest of temperatures and a spot that is cool enough in the warmest temperatures. Either too much heat or too much cold are both dangerous. This isn't too hard to manage if you are brooding in a climate controlled area, but if you are outside the temperature swings can make it challenging. I've seen my temperatures go from below freezing to the 70's Fahrenheit in a day or so when I have chicks in my brooder in the coop. I keep one end of my brooder toasty but it's large enough and well enough ventilated that the far end can cool off as it will. I've had ice in the far end of the brooder, the chicks stay in the warm part. When the weather heats up they go to the cool end. Even straight out of the incubator I find they can manage that by themselves if given a choice.

I'll include a photo of my 3' x 6' brooder built into the coop. In really cold weather I wrap it more. I vary the wattage of the heat lamp based on the time of the year.

View attachment 2883581

The chicks don't care where the heat comes from. People use all kinds of different heat sources from heat lamps, incandescent lamps, heat plates, heating pads, hovers, various reptile heaters, and more. They can all work if set up properly, any of them can have issues if not set up properly. If you use a heat lamp I strongly suggest you toss that clamp and hold it in place with wire or chain. Do not use string or plastic that can burn or melt but use wire or chain that cannot fail. That clamp can be knocked loose. If you really secure the heat lamp you greatly reduce the potential for a fire.

Many people put their brooders in a basement, an attached or detached garage or an outbuilding like a shed. Electricity is extremely helpful to provide heat. If you run an extension chord out there be careful. Some people build special outdoor brooders. My preference for that would be to set it in the coop, the run, or at least next to the run so the adults can see them. That helps with integration.

I'm not one to believe in magic numbers, whether that is square feet per chicken in brooders, coop, or runs, length of roost space, hen to rooster rations, size of nests, really not much of anything to do with chickens. Often numbers are thrown out on here as if they are a law of nature. In my opinion they are not for a couple of reasons. Some are tossed out as general guidelines, meant to keep people out of trouble no matter how poorly things are built or managed. For many people these are overkill, for some maybe not quite enough. On that square feet of coop space for chickens, I've seen anywhere from 1 sq ft to 15 sq ft per chicken given on this forum as the right amount. Which one do you believe? Another problem with magic numbers is that we all keep chickens for different goals, in different climates, different flock make-ups, different ages, bantam versus full-sized, and many other differences. It's no surprise that different numbers work for different ones of us. If you follow the link in my signature below you can see some of my thoughts about space for chickens.

I don't know enough about your flock or how you manage them to be able to tell you whether what you have and what you are doing will work long term. I don't know how old yours are. In Southern California you don't have to deal with snow and freezing weather, that can make a difference. I find the more room I have the fewer behavioral problems I have, the less hard I have to work, and the more flexibility I have to handle things that come up. All these things can reduce my stress level but I think the extra flexibility is what I value the most.

Integration is one of the things that can trigger a need for more space. You have four chickens in that area and it's working for now. It may forever. If you try to add more chickens, even after they are integrated, it is possible you will run out of room. I don't know your plans for how many chickens you eventually expect to have but the way I'd approach your situation would be to build a new coop big enough for all of them and use what you have as an outdoor brooder. It can also be used to isolate an injured chicken or for whatever comes up. It adds flexibility to what you can do.

Wow this is some really great info! Thank you so much!!

 

[AvocadoAbi]

Just wanted to chime in. You have been lucky that your four birds have been getting along in their current set up. But more than likely when you add younger birds, all hell will break loose.
It’s much too small and you will feel horrible when you see the torture and abuse your littles will endure from the older birds.
I highly suggest expanding your set up or upgrade to a larger coop/run.
TRUST ME I’m on coop #3 and wish I would have factored in Chicken Math when making that first coop

I too have raised chicks outdoors on the covered back patio and against the house. I used a dog pen, tarp and cardboard on the sides for drafts

In my opinion, they haven't had a single problem in their current coop...I wonder whether the poultry farmer dude who sold us this coop is legit...

 

[NatJ]

In my opinion, they haven't had a single problem in their current coop...I wonder whether the poultry farmer dude who sold us this coop is legit...

The farmer might be right about that pen having enough space for that many chickens, in certain conditions. (Being able to use the outdoor portion on every day of the year would be an important part of making it work.)


Different people say different things about how much space each chicken needs.

For commercial chicken keeping, they tend to have large numbers of chickens in one big pen, with the chickens all being the same kind and the same age. So applying their numbers to backyard chicken keeping often causes trouble, because there are many differences.

When you make the pen smaller, you often need more space per chicken (100 chickens in 400 square feet will seem less crowded than 2 chickens in 8 square feet, even though each chicken has 4 square feet of floor space.)

When you have chickens of different ages, or sometimes even same age but different breeds, you need more space per chicken (older ones pick on younger ones, one breed picks on another breed, etc.)

When you have fewer chickens, you may need more space per chicken (because with many chickens, they can sometimes get away from bullies just by ducking behind other chickens, while a few chickens just see each other all the time.)

When you care about the health of each individual chicken, you need more space (because a farmer that loses one chicken out of a hundred or a thousand or a million may not care much, but someone who loses one of their 4 pet chickens usually does care quite a bit.)

And of course it makes a difference whether chickens stay inside the whole time, or come out for a large amount of time.

In the case of your particular pen, if it was in a climate with cold winters, the chickens might have to stay in that little wooden box for days on end-- not good at all. But since you are in southern California, they can probably be out in the other part almost every waking hour, which helps. So people in a cold climate may think you have a tiny "coop" (wooden part) with a small "run" (under the roof, with wire-mesh sides), but in your climate it is more like an open-air coop and no additional run.

 

[gimmie birdies]

I have a huge foot stool I got for free, I have flipped upside down, and the under side is all open. I have turned it into a chick brooder. I am hatching out chicks in a few weeks. they will go in a covered insulated store room. Chicks have been breed in this manner in the past.

 

[rosemarythyme]

In my opinion, they haven't had a single problem in their current coop...I wonder whether the poultry farmer dude who sold us this coop is legit...

He may or may not be "legit" however how backyard chickens are kept is generally different than how commercial chickens are kept, or how a more traditional style farm set up might work.

In a commercial set up, birds are packed in tight and losses to health issues are considered normal - and so are things like debeaking to prevent birds from cannibalizing each other due to stress. The legal minimum for chicken housing is often based on this sort of set up, i.e. 1 sq ft of housing per bird, which is much less than any of us on here would recommend.

Glad to know your current flock isn't having issues in the coop and run space as it stands, however since you want to double the size of the flock without increasing the space, that 50% reduction in space per bird may cause issues once the new birds start integrating in. So if you're going to go ahead with this, the important thing to keep in mind is, what realistically are your options if things don't work out? Are you willing to rehome or cull some birds if that's needed, and/or are you able to enlarge the set up to keep the peace?

 

[3KillerBs]

In a commercial set up, birds are packed in tight and losses to health issues are considered normal - and so are things like debeaking to prevent birds from cannibalizing each other due to stress.

Yes. Debeaking, accepting losses, and forced-air ventilation.

A lot of the people here who've adopted ex-batts say that they have a lot of behavioral problems. A commercial farmer doesn't worry about them. (Additionally, they work with breeds that have been developed specifically to tolerate confinement).