*When putting together your baby chickens brooder, don't choose the bright white heat lamp. To calm and warm chicks and reduce pecking, pick up infrared light bulbs.
Once your baby chickens have arrived, proper care is essential. Hatching chicken eggs need a good heat source, a baby safe drinking container, and more. Learn about raising backyard chickens here!
Courtesy of Mark Rasmussen
Backyard chickens are a joy to have around your yard, and are very useful when it comes to eating slugs, bugs, and all of the weeds you don't really want around, raising chickens for eggs is also very helpful for the family because they are always fresh and nutritious, and also come in many beautiful colors.
Talk about a project everyone will love! There is nothing so fun as raising baby chickens. The kids love them and they are just the right speed for little kids and older ones too. After you get a bit of experience in chicken care try hatching eggs in your own egg incubator.
Have you ever noticed how the womenfolk are the ones who bring the chickens home? There is something very consistent about the head woman taking a fancy to these beautiful birds. So where do you get them? Try online Baby Chicken Hatcheries.
Dad gets involved later, like when the chicken coop needs to be built. Check out our helpful Free Chicken Coop Plans. Wow you have arrived! You have your little peepers in the box. Now what do you do?
My baby chicks at three days old under an infrared light.
Housing for the Babies
Courtesy of fishpickdiver
You will decide what kind of brooder to house them in depending on how many chicks you ordered. They need to be able to hop about freely with a choice to move to and away from the heat source, remembering to count the space the feeder and waterer will take up.
For fewer than seven birds you can use a cage for a small animal, like a rabbit. They will be quite safe from the family cat, and the removable tray makes it easy to clean. Make that easy for the kids to clean! You can also use a cardboard box in a pinch, however they are more difficult to keep dry and clean so we don't recommend one for long term use.
If you have room you may order up to 25 chicks for a good sized family, or more if you really take to chicken raising. Next you will want to add some form of litter to keep them dry and clean. Pine, cedar or fir shavings work great and smell good too.
My ornamental laying hens at twenty weeks in their new outside run.
Newspaper is truly frugal, but the ink makes the chicks stained, and it is wet and unpleasant to change, so if you can, avoid it and go for the shavings. Keep your babies clean by changing their bedding every few days.
Don't forget that your baby birds look forward to time on the roost, so while they are little provide a dowel about 3-5" from the floor. They will happily sleep, socialize and play on it.
Warmth
Next we need a heat source. Get yourself an infra red heat lamp and one of those reflectors found in any hardware store. You can either hang it from above or clamp it securely to the cage. Infra red is considered a better choice than a clear heat lamp as chicks can begin pecking each other if overcrowded, and the red is soothing to them.
Be careful that the temperature is stable at 90-100 degrees for the first week, and if you choose you can switch to a 100 watt regular light bulb, gradually reducing the temperature by 5 degrees each week until the feathers come in at 6-8 weeks.
Pay close attention to the temperature and humidity of your egg incubator, following the manufacturers directions. Remember, the hatching eggs also need to be turned several times a day.
This is our ornamental 20 week chick "Rockstar".
If your chicks have to be in a garage or other unheated building, you will certainly need a real heat lamp instead of an electric light bulb until they feather out.
Baby chickens are much like puppies, they huddle under a light if they are too cold, or will scatter to the edges of the cage, away from the light if too hot.
Water
Courtesy of Caswell_tom
Chicks will need clean fresh water at all times. Pick up a round waterer like this one. Do not use a bowl or pot because the first week or so the baby chickens will throw themselves into any water sources they can find and drown themselves.
If you don't have a waterer you can use a bowl filled with marbles so they cannot do themselves in. I could not find any marbles for my current chicks so I used a few of those little super balls the kids bounce around. This curious water diving tendency disappears after the first week or so.
Do not let your chickens run out of water as they need to drink a quite alot. When they are adult hens you will be very surprised at how much water they must drink to produce those organic eggs.
Raising free range chickens is a blast! You may be new to the variety of all kinds of chickens that you can find though online baby chicken hatcheries. Or you can really save money on buying chicks by trying your hand at Incubating Chicken Eggs.Check out our Chicken Care Pages and start raising baby chickens today.
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