Raising Chicks
Whether you have one chick or thousands, the importance of their care is very important. Whether you hatch them yourself or buy them from a farm store or a hatchery. The new chicks need your care to get them to adulthood.
We raise out chicks to lay eggs and we choose breeds that lay larger eggs. Our hens, pullets, roosters, and chicks aren’t pets but are treated well, fed well, and have safe areas to sleep. Our runs are covered, and they are allowed to roam and eat outside the runs.
The last group of chicks arrived at 6:30 am on a Wednesday morning at our local Post Office. We had them shipped from a hatchery to us. The Post Office calls and tells us they have arrived and it’s a fast trip to the Post Office to pick up the chicks. The chicks are hatched on Monday, packed and shipped to us via Priority Mail and once back here at the farm are made ready for their life here. When opening the packing box, each chick is removed by hand and has its beak wetted and dipped into fresh water. This encourages them to begin drinking. Prior to this, the chicks have been hydrated by the egg yolk and it can sustain a chick for several days.
The new chicks are few a high protein starter feed we get from a nearby mill. They remain on this feed until they reach egg laying age. With most of our chickens that is about 18-20 weeks but some of our breeds begin to lay at 15 weeks.
The new chicks sleep and spend time under an electric brooder plate that safely provides heat with no risk of fire. We stopped using heat lamps some time ago.
For about six weeks, the chicks are kept in the “nursery” and then moved to a larger area and integrated into an adult flock. We do not mix our breeds and keep them separate from each other when we hatch out eggs to raise.
Chicks become pullets and cockerels and grow quickly into hens and roosters, since most of what we do is fresh eggs, we sell off our extra cockerels and roosters as meat birds. We only keep a few roosters for breeding stock and we believe that having roosters with our hens keeps them healthy and happy.
We do all of this for our customers to have fresh eggs directly from our farm.