I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to the newest members of our home! Six Brahma chicks that are yet to be named. They love to sing in the sunshine and love to be held. These chicks are growing quickly, and they will soon be the newest members of our backyard flock.
We keep chickens in our backyard. We started a year ago with six barred Plymouth Rock chicks and a cage in the garage. I have prior experience with raising chickens, so it wasn’t a difficult prospect, but it did take some work.
We started this project for our son, who was almost three years old at the time. Since he was able to walk, we have been teaching him responsibility through action. When he learned to walk, he became responsible for putting away any toys he played with. Then, as he got older, it became his responsibility to feed the dogs and help with his laundry, etc. We thought raising hens from chicks was another great way to teach him responsibility for something other than himself. It was also a way to teach him about life and growth, and to help him understand where the food we eat comes from. In addition to being a great project for our son, it is also a great way to supplement our food supply along with our garden.
Lastly, it is just plain fun. I love working with my hands. Everything about the project was exciting, from building the chicken coop and run to caring for the chicks and watching them grow. If you have never seen a flock of chickens interact with each other and chase after bugs in the yard, then you have no idea how funny it can be.
If you have no experience with raising chickens, it can seem like a daunting undertaking. It’s really not, though. It is quite easy as long as you understand a few things. Most people with a backyard flock want eggs. For eggs you need hens. Having a rooster or roosters can complicate things for someone with no chicken raising experience. There are even places where local ordinance does not allow you to have roosters in your backyard flock. Unfortunately, a lot of people go full-speed into starting a backyard flock without understanding some basic terminology.
The average person starting a backyard flock will probably head to their local feed and seed store in the spring, where there is usually an area sectioned off full of little baby chickens and ducks. They decide they want to bring some home because they are cute. Chickens are like any other animal in some ways: they require care and they WILL get bigger and require more space. Unlike other animals, however, the average person cannot tell the difference between a male and a female.
A couple of terms that you will see when buying chicks are straight run and pullet. Buying straight run chicks is a 50/50 gamble. These chicks may be males or females, and you won’t know it until they start developing. Straight run chicks are generally cheaper, as they are not sexed at the hatchery. Pullets are sexed females that should develop into egg-laying hens. With that being said, the sexing process is not perfect and there is a chance (albeit much smaller) that these chicks may develop into roosters.
Once you have your chicks at home, they need food, water, warmth, and protection. We start our chicks on nonmedicated starter-grower feed we buy from our local feed and seed store. For the first six weeks, we keep them in a large cage in the garage. The cage is lined with wheat straw that we change regularly, and they have a heat lamp to keep them warm if it gets too cold. During the day we let them get plenty of sun. They love it and need it for growth, and later for egg production.
After six weeks, we will begin to introduce these girls to our other chickens. As I said before, we started out with six last year, but right now we only have two. We lost one to a snake the first summer. Then, on Thanksgiving of last year, sometime in the early morning hours an animal (we believe a raccoon) slipped past our defenses and killed three of the hens. We have since made some changes and hope to avoid another event like that.
When these six are ready to introduce to our two Plymouth Rocks, we will move the cage into the chicken run during the day and into the coop at night. The idea is to let them see each other without being able to physically interact with each other. After a couple of weeks of that, we should be ready to fully introduce them to each other.
The last step of introducing new chickens to a flock is sometimes the most precarious. It involves letting them all out together to interact physically. Within a flock of chickens, there is a pecking order. If you have a flock with a pecking order already established, then adding new chickens to the flock obviously upsets that order. Letting the flock establish a new pecking order is important. The chickens will sometimes fight during this process, but it usually doesn’t last long.
The Brahma is a large breed of chicken. Our new girls will probably grow up to be a lot larger than our Plymouth Rocks. Brahmas are not very prolific egg layers, though. This isn’t a big deal for us, because we already get enough eggs for us and our families and we don’t need a ton of eggs. I have always thought Brahmas are beautiful, and I was excited to get these six to add to our flock. We can’t wait to watch them grow!