I started all my chicks outside in a wire pen in the run. Temps were in the 20s, sometimes dropping into the teens, with snow still falling. They did great. Strong, active, confident....and off all heat and completely integrated with the rest of the flock by 4 weeks old. My first-ever batch I raised indoors with a heat lamp, and by 5.5 weeks it was either them or me! I put them out into the coop. The first two nights I had a heat lamp in there for them. Temps dropped down to 18 and I worried all night long, getting up to check them. They weren’t anywhere near the lamp - they were snuggled all comfy in a ball of beaks and feathers over in front of the pop door. They thrived. The morning of the third day I took the lamp out and I’ve never touched one again.
I ordered those chicks too early for my area, I know that now. I didn’t understand the concept of ordering and scheduling delivery for later at a better time of year, and that was strictly my fault. The day they arrived from MPC - a full day and a half after P.O. tracking showed they already been delivered to me, by the way - it was 17 below zero and late February. I finally put them out on April 1st. If I had waited until the “appropriate time”, according to the conventional way of doing things, they’d have been close to laying in the brooder box because that year our last snowfall was on June 6th.
April is a good time to get chicks in my opinion. However, around here the “normal” spring chick season is still pretty cold, snowy, and blustery, so we almost have to get a head start on things. You can’t go too wrong raising chicks if you just take a page from a broody hen, and they raise their babies successfully in all kinds of weather.
