trying again any advise is welcome

[Zammys Zooyard]

I posted before christmas about my little henny peny steeling eggs from the othe hens till we found her with 21, unfortunatly they never hatched.

We are trying again, this time we have not alloud any of them to keep the eggs, and at present we have 8 eggs in the incubater, and so far they look like they are developing right along. I have been doing lots of reading on hatching these precious babies and hope i get it right,, I will keep you posted on that.

I have grabbed the bull by the horns and and ordered 25 babies from murry mcmurry that are due to arrive the week of March 10th.

I was reading about the brooder,, im not sure if i got it right,, I have a 4ft x 4ft x 3ft tall wood box with removable lid that i put in a wooden storage shed with a power cord for the light, Is that to much room? I had planned to put sand and hay in the bottom to give there little legs something to hold on to.

will they be warm enough outside? I see alot of people with them in the house, i am just worried about them in the house with the cats and dogs and kids..

thanks for any advise.

Zammy

 

[mamabigbird]

I don't think you can have too much space for the chicks. Too small would be a bigger problem. As long as they have a heat lamp to warm up under and enough room to get away from the heat if they get too warm. I don't know about sand on the bottom. I have mostly heard of pine shavings with paper towel over top. I wonder if they would try to eat the sand and maybe have digestive problems at their young age. Hopefully someone else will answer you better than I can. Good luck and have fun.

 

[Toshi]

That sounds like plenty of room for 25 chicks. Really the more room the better they wil l grow into it. In my opinion anyways. As for being outside...It depends on where you live. You always have to take that into thought as well. March can be kind of cold pending location. So think about what is the normal temp for you in March?

But really...I would keep mine in, like a garage or something, i always brood mine in my attached garage works well. But it can be very cold in IN at times, and i am a bit chicken so to say to kick my birds out to early. I didn't put them out until they were seven almost eight weeks old. But if you wanted to you could brood them a bit inside, let them get feathers and then move them out into the shed. As for sand keep that till they are older. Pine shavings work very well. Us the deep litter method, works great.

Cats and dogs could be a problem, i always kept mine away, they understood pretty well after i got after them a few times, they left the chicks well enough alone. Kid i am not sure about dont have any. Hope someone else can be more helpful!

 

[lazy gardener]

As they grow, they'll need about 1 square foot each, at least. If you can keep the night time temps under the lamp up to 90-95 degrees for the first week, outside is fine. You'll want to decrease the under lamp temp. about 5 degrees every week. Have the lamp at one corner/edge so the chicks can get away from it if they get too warm.

 

[Zammys Zooyard]

OMG they are here, they are just beautiful

 

[lularat]

Congratulations on your little chicks. They are so cute. Do you know what kind they are?

 

[Zammys Zooyard]

Im not sure, I got them from Murry McMurry all I know they are brown egg layers all hens