Getting Your Ducks in a Row for Raising Baby Chicks: Eight Questions and Answers

The expression "taking them under your wing” is one of about a million idiomatic phrases that originated with poultry keeping.  I’m sure you know what it means and I’m willing to bet that you’ve used the phrase yourself more than once.  But just in case you’ve never heard the expression, it means to nurture and protect those who are inexperienced, young, or in need of protection—just as mother hen nurtures and protects her baby chicks and gathers them under her protective wing.  When you adopt baby chicks, you’re taking these small, helpless, peeping balls of fluff under your wing.  It’s a big responsibility, and if you’ve never done it before, you should make sure you understand the list of basics before you undertake this big venture.  If you have done it before, it’s good to pull out that list and review it just to make sure you have all your ducks in a row (I’m mixing metaphors here, but it does present an interesting mental image!).  Raising baby chicks is not hard, after all, but there are a few things you have to consider and a few things you need to do right. 

I'll be publishing this post on June 5, and shortly after I post it, my wife, Kathy, and I will get in the car and set off on our quest for baby chicks.  If you’re reading it the day I post it, you can imagine us somewhere on I-35 headed south from Minnesota to Webster City, Iowa to pick up chicks at the Murray McMurray Hatchery.  Or maybe we’re on the way home and I’m holding a box of peeping fluff balls on my lap.  You can be sure that getting these babies was not a spontaneous decision.  What follows is a list of the questions I've asked myself and the answers I've come up with before getting these babies. I think these questions and answers will be useful to you if you're considering getting chicks for the first time, or if you're adding to your existing flock. There’s lots of useful information on the web about caring for baby chicks, and every time I’ve gotten chicks I’ve taken the time beforehand to sample from the collective knowledge of all those people who have raised chicks and written about it.  I’m including a lot of links to all those folks in this post.  It takes a village, don’t you know, to raise a chick. 

1 - Do I want chickens?  This is the obvious first thing you consider. If you’ve thought about owning chickens, you probably already realize that becoming a chicken owner will put you at the forefront of the local/sustainable food movement.  You’ll be producing food right in your own backyard!  If you already produce food in your backyard with a garden, chickens are a natural complement to that garden—the chickens will happily devour any leftover vegetable scraps and weeds you give them and all that composted chicken manure will make for some very happy garden plants!  Also, any chickens you keep will, without a doubt, be better treated and happier than the majority of the hens laying the eggs you find at the grocery store.  So, does it make you happy to imagine a small flock of hens clucking contentedly in your backyard?  If you immediately answer “yes” to that question, you’ve jumped the first hurdle!  That was the easy one!  Of course if you already have chickens the question becomes, “Do I want more, chickens?”  The answer to that question is always “yes”, naturally.

Coop Update

Happy birthday to the chicks on their one-month birthday!  Here are Mama Courtney, Bonnie (in back), Marissa, Nicky,  & Paulette (L to R).

Here's a picture of Nicky the Teenage Chicky.  See how she's starting to get the crazy Legbar hairdo already! She's also already getting the salmon colored breast feathers that will be her adult color.

Meanwhile, over in the big coop, every nest box in the coop is empty except for this one which both Veronica the Easter Egger & Buffy the Buff Orpington seem to feel is the only one that will work for them. Never said chickens were bright. On the other hand they're a lot like us.

Fine Poultry Art & The Chicks Go Out

I recently had a birthday, and my amazing wife, Kathy, presented me with an equally amazing birthday present – a portrait of four of my chickens by the Wisconsin artist Susan Martin.  I’ve been using an image of Susan’s painting “Three Wise Roosters” on my egg cartons because I love its rusticity and whimsy, so I was overjoyed to see the images of Snowball the Silkie rooster, Emily and Courtney the Silkie hens, and Angitou the Polish hen put to canvas. 

Snowball and His Hens - by Susan Martin

This group of chickens, by the way, are my “decorative” chickens and share a coop separate from the rest of the flock.  Courtney and her Legbar chicks share a small coop next door to this coop and my plan is for them to all eventually live together.  The first step in incorporating the babies with this group of chickens happened a week ago when I replaced the solid pop door separating the two coops with a hardware cloth panel, so everybody could see each other.

The Legbar Babies Viewing the World Through a Hardware Cloth Window

Yesterday, I opened the door entirely so I could see how everybody would interact.  I sprinkled a handful of dried mealworms at the door entrance and in no time at all, Courtney and the kids were at the door and then through the door, happily pecking up mealworms. 

Courtney calls to her babies through the pop door & out they come, pell-mell, tumble bumble!

Emily and Angitou were in the coop when Courtney walked in with her chicks and both hens acted very cautiously.  Emily was a little taken aback by this intrusion of strangers, and quietly backed into a corner.  Angitou stood stock still and actually backed up when one of the chicks ran over to check her out.  Courtney apparently was concerned about this interaction, however, and ran at Angitou aggressively, chased her around a couple of times until Angitou escaped out the door and into the run.    

After an hour in the big coop, I put Courtney and babies back into their coop.  They’re in the big coop again today, though, and I’m hoping I can leave them there all day without any major battles.

The chicks are 23 days old today!  Here, Marissa says, "See how cool and grown up I am!  I can perch!"

The Chicks Are 16 Days Old

Ah, they grow up so fast!  Everybody has cute little wing feathers, and Paulette, precocious chick that she is, already has sprouted tail feathers.

Courtney contentedly poses with a couple of her kids

Paulette is proud of her new tail feathers

One postscript on my March 21 post about the chick nursery:  I'd suggested that paper towels were a good thing to use on the floor of the brooder coop.  They really do work well for all the reasons I talked about in that post.  But, I’ve never had a broody hen in the coop with the babies before.  New advice: If you’re planning on using a hen, forget the paper towels.  Courtney is constantly scratching the floor in an attempt to unearth treats for her babies.   There are no treats down there, Courtney--nothing but a wooden floor!  When the weather gets warmer she can take the kids outside and scratch in the dirt and then she'll be a whole lot more successful in finding buried treasure.  In the coop the only product of her efforts have been huge paper towel tumbleweeds!  When she was just sitting on golf balls the floor stayed pristine.  After a single day with chicks, the coop floor was down to bare wood with lots of piles of crumpled up paper towels.  The morning of her second day with the chicks I found that one of the paper towel wads had wound up in the chick water font and had wicked out all the water.  So not only was there no water to drink, there was also a big pile of soggy towels!  That’s when I got rid of all of the paper towels and put down pine shavings.  The pine shavings have been absolutely fine.

Finally, I have been focusing all my recent blogs on Courtney and the chicks.  There has been a certain amount of grumbling among the other hens that I’m playing favorites and that they’ve been forgotten about.  So to set things right, here’s a sketch my wife Kathy made this week in the hen yard when everybody was out enjoying the spring weather.  There you go, hens--now you can stop complaining!

The Hens

The Chicks - Latest Update

I am sorry to report that one of the babies looked lethargic on the evening of April 1, and by the next morning when I went to the coop I found that she had died during the night.  I am completely mystified as to the cause.  One thing you need to watch for in baby chicks is pasty butt - a condition that occurs in baby chicks where poop sticks to the down around their vent and can build up to the point where it forms an impermeable plug - it can be fatal and is easily avoided simply by washing the poop off their down.  This chick did not suffer from that and as a matter of fact showed no outward appearance of any problem.  Baby chicks can simply mysteriously die, and that's where I am at with this one.  I've been worried that this baby died of something potentially infectious, but time has passed and the others continue to be happy and healthy, so I would like to think that I am out of the woods for an infectious disease.

Meanwhile the chicks have been christened.  I would like to introduce Bonnie, Marissa, Nicky, and Paulette!  They are a week and a day old now - notice how they're already getting little wing feathers!

Courtney & Babies - 8 days old

Driving Across State Lines to Pick Up Chicks

 It played out a little like a drug deal.  We met in a park.  When I saw them arrive I casually walked over and they handed me a package.  Then I gave them some cash and we went our separate ways.  The tip-off that this was a legitimate transaction was that this mysterious package peeped.

Baby Chicks! Coming Soon To a Coop Near You!

Baby chicks and eggs have been a symbol of spring since ancient times – perhaps all the way back to the time when chickens were first domesticated.  They also have been important symbols in Christianity from the times of the early church.  The egg symbolizes the rock tomb where Christ’s body was laid and the hatching chick symbolizes His resurrection.

So it is highly appropriate that baby chick day here at the Hipster Hen Ranch will be Easter Sunday. The chick nursery is set up and ready to go and Courtney and I are both eagerly awaiting the soon-to-arrive babies.

The Chick Nursery

Some specifics on the nursery:

Chick water font filled with electrolyte solution:  The small water font is designed for babies.  The electrolytes are because the chicks may be stressed.  They are traveling from Eastern Wisconsin to Minnesota over the course of a day during the very first day of their lives.  While car travel will not be as stressful as being plunked into a box and sent through the mail, it is still  more taxing than just hanging around the spot they are hatched.

Baby chick crumbles:  Eventually Courtney will take her brood outside where they’ll learn about bugs, seeds, and scratching in the dirt, but for now they will be eating crumbles designed specifically for baby chicks by our friends at Purina.

Paper Towels:  I always start babies on paper towels.  I don’t recommend newspapers since they are too slippery.  Many people use pine shavings and while I'll switch to that when the chicks are older, I like to start with paper towels.  The chicks will instinctively scratch and peck at the floor from the get-go, and eating pine shavings is not particularly healthy for babies.  I scatter crumbles all over the floor and they will have a good time pecking at those – and the crumbles will be much easier to find on paper towels than they would if they were all mixed up with pine shavings.  Paper towels are handy because as they become soiled, I can just layer more towels over the top.  In a few weeks, when the chicks are ready for pine shavings, I can just roll up the whole mass of paper towels and put them in the compost pile.

Heat lamp:  The lamp is hanging high in the air and will provide supplemental heat.  When the chicks are cold, or want to sleep, they’ll find a nice warm spot under Courtney’s wing - their main heat source.  And while it isn't a thought I like to dwell on, there’s the possibility that Courtney will not accept these babies.  If that were to occur, I would move the heat lamp lower it would be the primary heat source.

Mama hen:  I have great faith in this sweet little bird.  She’s been patiently sitting on golf balls for weeks!

The Ever-Patient Courtney

Broody Hens Again: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Broodiness But Were Afraid To Ask

I got some questions about broody hens after yesterday’s post, so here’s more, plus an update on my broody hen situation.

To recap what I said yesterday in a couple of sentences: Chickens are really bad moms. The maternal instinct has pretty much been bred out of most breeds of chickens.

Typically the egg laying cycle goes something like this: (1) Just prior to laying an egg the hen’s pituitary pumps tons of a hormone called prolactin into her bloodstream and she clucks, “I’m gonna lay this egg, and then by golly, I’m gonna sit on it for 21 days until it hatches – I’m gonna have me a baby chick!” (2) Hen then lays previously mentioned egg. (3) Hen’s prolactin levels return to normal. (4) Hen says, “Wait….what was I thinking?” hops out of the nest & goes about her business of pecking and scratching. (5) Somebody collects the egg and we all get omelets.

It is actually a good thing hens are bad moms – if they started pining about all those lost eggs, got depressed and stopped laying eggs, we would all suffer. Also, a hen sitting on eggs is not necessary for the propagation of chickens. Some hobbyists still get baby chicks this way but the poultry industry relies on incubators almost completely.

Occasionally, though, after a hen lays an egg, her pituitary continues pumping prolactin and she gets very serious about sitting on the nest for the requisite 21 days and raising babies. That phenomenon is known to poultry people as broodiness. The term broodiness was coined to describe chicken behavior and only later was borrowed to describe people. But you can imagine how a broody hen acts. She sits alone in a dark place, growls threateningly at any chicken or person who comes near her, stops laying more eggs, and takes maybe a 5 minute break once a day to eat, drink, and poop. Otherwise, she just sits there 24/7.

Sadly, in most domestic poultry situations, because there is no rooster, a broody hen is sitting on sterile eggs that will never hatch. Also, more than likely her eggs are collected as she lays them, so she’s actually sitting on an empty nest and in deep denial.

This is exactly the situation that has been going on with my two little Silkie hens, Emily and Courtney.  Courtney has entrenched herself in a nest box with her head facing a back corner and looks just like a giant cotton ball from outside the nest box. Emily scratched out a depression in the straw on the floor in a back corner of the coop. Neither of them are sitting on any eggs, but there they sit. The perfect solution when a hen goes broody would be to give her some fertile eggs, or allow her to hatch her own, but of course then you have baby chicks and that is usually not a practical outcome. A less perfect solution is to break the hen’s broodiness.

If you surf the net, it isn’t hard to find all sorts of suggested methods for breaking broodiness. Some of them, such as dunking the hen in ice-cold water, seem extreme. I use a method that seems less cruel. I put my hens in jail. I put them in a wire crate, so they can’t go back to their nests. There’s nothing to make a nest out of in the crate, so they are unable to nest. In theory, after a few days in this situation, a hen’s raging hormones will abate and at that point she can go back in the coop with the other chickens. Normally, after some initial complaining, hens don’t seem to be too distressed to be in the crate. Eventually, they start eating again, and drinking, and roosting at night on a roost within the crate.

After a few days, they get out of jail, and are totally reformed chickens, their broodiness gone and forgotten.  In a couple of weeks they start laying eggs again.

This time, though – for the first time ever, I wanted to maintain the broodiness so these little hens could be moms for the baby chicks I’m bringing home later this month. To that end, I first decided to improve Emily’s situation. I created what I have dubbed a "luxury nest box" by turning a plastic waste basket on its side and putting a cushy excelsior pad in the bottom. Then I added a handful of golf balls – just like having real eggs to sit on! I removed Emily from the little nest she had made in the straw and put the luxury nest box down on top of her nest. Emily went to find some food and water – something she does only a couple times a day when she’s broody – and I went about my business. When I checked in with her later in the day, she was out in the main part of the coop clucking and scratching with the other hens. She had completely lost her broodiness. I was astounded. Considering the difficulty I’ve had in the past breaking Emily’s broodiness, I was amazed that I had accomplished it simply by covering her old nest with the luxury box.

One failure – on to the next hen. I took the same luxury nest box that had not provided any inspiration to Emily and put it in a small separate coop along with food and water, and then removed a protesting Courtney from her nest box and placed her in this coop. When I checked back later, Courtney had buried herself in the luxury box so far that all I could see was her fluffy white butt. And she was sitting on the pile of golf balls with great contentment. Yes! Success! Hopefully she’ll continue her vigil until the chicks show up!

All you can see is Courtney's fluffy backside as she tries with great determination to hatch golf balls .

Broody Hens

Buffy the Buff Orpington Demonstrates Broodiness

There is always an adjustment period when you add new hens to your flock.  Flocks maintain a strict pecking order and when new chickens are introduced the entire pecking order has to be reestablished.  This can be a brutal process.  You can expect pecking hard enough to draw blood – and the new hens usually take the brunt of it because they are young and inexperienced, they are smaller, and they are outnumbered.  There have been a couple of occasions where I have actually removed a chicken to prevent it from being injured or killed. 

I have always raised baby chicks under heat lamps and introduced them to the flock when they are old enough to defend themselves. With new babies showing up here at the end of the month I’ve been mulling over what I can do to make the process easier.  Right now I’m considering raising the babies with a broody hen.  Since the hen is already a member of the flock there is the potential that the flock will accept her chicks more readily than they would “strange” chickens.  And potentially the young ones will have a mom to protect them from the other chickens.  This is all great in theory.  First, though, I need a broody hen. 

A broody hen is simply a hen that sits on eggs until they hatch and then takes care of the babies.  Broody hens are as rare as hens’ teeth.  Broodiness has been bred out of most modern breeds of chickens because broodiness costs commercial egg producers money.  When a hen goes broody and decides that she wants to hatch a clutch of eggs, she stops laying more eggs and sits on her eggs almost around the clock with only very brief breaks to eat and poop.  If there is no rooster, she’s sitting on sterile eggs, but that doesn’t deter her.  If you take away all of her eggs, she will continue to sit in the empty nest, pining away.  If you are in the business of producing eggs, this hen is useless.  Not only is she not laying, but being broody is physically taxing since she’s not eating or exercising adequately.  So breeders have selected for hens that don't go broody and today most breeds simply never do.  They must be propagated entirely by artificial incubators.

There are some heritage breeds, though, that retain the propensity for broodiness – Marans are one such breed.  Orpingtons also frequently go broody.  And there are Silkies.  Silkies go broody at the drop of a hat.  The smallest trigger- changes in lighting, leaving eggs in the nest boxes too long, looking at them wrong – will make them go broody. It’s a problem.  While Silkies generally aren’t kept for egg production anyway, it is still unhealthy for a chicken to be broody all of the time.  So when my little fluffy girls go broody, I usually try to break their broodiness.  There are a several tried and true methods to break broodiness – more on that in a later post.

Right now both of my little Silkie hens are broody and rather than breaking them of it, I am encouraging them.  They are currently both sitting on a small pile of golf balls.  On the day I get my babies, I plan to sneak into the coop in the dead of night and surreptitiously remove the golf balls and replace them with baby chicks.  Hopefully, they will think that the eggs have hatched.  They will then raise their babies who will be destined to grow to be twice as big as they are.  When the time comes, Moms and semi-grown babies will be reintroduced to the flock. 

To be clear, I’ve never tried this before.  Will it work?  Stay tuned.

Emily and Courtney the Silkie Hens