I hatched 15 chicks a month ago, then bought 5 more. Out of the 20 I have 5 boys. They grew faster and do more zoom-ies. I moved the boys to an outdoor pen.
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After a few weeks, our little fluffy butts are feathered out enough to allow them to regulate their body temperatures and they can be weaned off the heat and moved outside to the coop, or an outdoor brooder. Some of our members choose to brood chicks outdoors from the start even.
There are many ways to do this transition successfully, so this week I would like to hear your thoughts and practices when it comes to moving chicks outside and having them adapt to living out there. Specifically:
- Do you brood your chicks indoors or outside and if the latter, how do you go about it?
- If you brood indoors, at what age do you do the transition from brooder to outside?
- Any tips for making the transition easier for the little ones?
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As a newbie to chickens, this is all helpful info. Thanks for sharing, everyone.
My chicks are a little over a week old and before reading this thread, I was nervous about moving them from the house to the barn. Not anymore. They're going in the barn tonight.
Is it possible for the brooder box to be too big? Would that cause any problems? I recently moved and have a bunch of boxes and am planning on moving my seven chicks to a wardrobe box which is something like 2'
What do you do at night with them?I got five babies on a whim with a gift card to my local farm store the third week of March. I kept them in the laundry room for four weeks before I got fed up with the daily bed changing. They also quickly outgrew their “brooder”. My laundry room is not heated and with the crazy weather they feathered out very quickly. I move them to the big girl run in a doggie playpen that I laid wire shelving over to protect them from curious big girls. Now they are free ranging with the big girls as of Sunday. I keep them in the playpen but leave the door open now so they can come and go as they see fit. They are learning their pecking order quickly but seem to be integrating so much better than last year’s babies. I kept last year’s babies separate for a lot longer in the garage because my addition took longer to build than I expected (life and Murphy’s law). The big girls are ignoring the baby starlets this year for the most part. I love being able to have them in the run with the big girls. It makes feeding and watering so much easier. I can’t wait until I’m able to take out the playpen and let them start roosting with the big girls.
The biggest issue has been keeping them from eating the big girls food.
I brooded them indoors for about three weeks. Moved them out to the shed with heat if it got under 50.
We made a transition coop for them and kept them them in there during the day for two weeks to acclimate them to the older hens. For the last 5 days they have been out in the big coop and they LOVE it!! The biggest issue has been keeping them from eating the big girls food. I hope someone addresses how to put them to roost with the big hens!!!
I don’t ever worry about feeding according to production, gender, or age. My tiny chicks get a bag of Starter….the smallest bag I can find….and when it’s gone they get what the rest of the flock gets, either All Flock or Grower. We are in a pretty rural area (the nearest TSC is a 50 mile drive one way, and not very big) so I pick up whichever they have in stock or whichever has the best freshness date. By the time that first bag of Starter is gone, they are already spending lots of time outside of the brooder among the adults. I provide a separate container of oyster shells on the side for the layers. It’s worked flawlessly for years.I have my entire flock on 18-20% protien all-flock type feed with oystershell offered separately for the layers.