 Ready to start keeping chickens? In our second post on raising chickens for beginners, we'll cover how to incubate hatching eggs, brood chicks, and the basics of caring for your chickens into adulthood.
In our first post in this series, we explored everything you need to know before getting chickens: local ordinances, how to choose a breed, where to purchase chicks or hatching eggs, and more. If you haven't checked that out yet, we highly recommend it! Alright, let's get started! First, for those of you that are choosing to hatch your own chicks, let's talk about incubation.
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Two friends enjoying the view.
Caring for your chickens in winter can feel like a daunting task, especially if you are a newer chicken keeper. There are so many things to consider. How do you keep your flock’s water from freezing? How cold is too cold? Should you shut the coop up completely in cold weather? Add supplemental heat?
It’s easy to get worried about your chickens out there, braving the cold and snow. But chickens are tough, and with the right strategies, they can get through winter comfortably. In Western Massachusetts, where our farm is located, New England winters can be harsh and unpredictable, with snow and temperatures that dip into the negative. Despite all that, our chickens do just fine, as long as we prepare well and provide them the right care. In this post I’m going to talk about all aspects of chicken winter care, from coop building down to how to best keep your chicken’s toes warm at night (spoiler alert, these two things are actually related!).  Using medical tape to treat a crooked toe. Have you ever wondered what medical supplies you need on hand in a chicken first aid kit? You want to be ready for everything from emergencies to common ailments, but it can be hard to sort through all the supplements and medications out there to figure out what works, what doesn’t, and what you actually need.
In this post, I’m going to go over everything I keep on hand to take care of our birds. Putting together a medical kit for your chickens is an investment of both time and money. I hope this peek into our medical supplies will help you save both, and be a starting point for you to put together your own chicken first aid kit.  An Ameraucana hen and her three babies. If you’ve ever experienced a broody hen, you know they are fierce and determined as they sit on and protect their eggs. They are also a great way to expand your flock, as they will incubate, hatch, and raise chicks for you.
On the flip side, she can be an unwelcome disturbance in the flock, especially if you don’t have fertile eggs or young chicks readily available. They also often need their own space, but they don’t pay egg rent. Not only that, but broodiness can put a real strain on your hen. In this post we will look at both sides of the broody coin: how to support and care for your hen while helping her become a mama, and how to break a broody if need be while minimizing stress to her. Why buy straight run? Here's some straight talk on straight run, the sexing of chicks, and the common poultry industry practice of killing male chicks at hatch.  A life in pictures: one of our roosters, Dumbledore's Baby, from chick to adult. On our farm, all male chicks are grown out into beautiful roosters and have the opportunity to lead a quality life. At maturity, our extra boys are swiftly and respectfully processed. We often have friends and family over to help us with this, so that others may practice harvesting their own meat. It’s a powerful experience that has both challenged us and gifted us a completely new relationship with our food.
On our farm, humanely raised, pastured meat is a natural byproduct of producing hatching eggs and chicks. Because we are such a small farm, it’s easy for us to absorb our extra roosters, adding them to our freezer or sharing them with friends and family. But what happens in large scale hatcheries? |
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