Happy Chick Days!

The chick Rhett picked out.

It is officially chick days at Murdoch's! They were expecting to get chicks last Sunday so we called both the Westminster and Littleton stores a lot during the day, but neither store ended up getting them. So Rhett woke up early Monday morning and called and they were both getting the chicks ready to sell! We woke up Lilly (bad idea, but she wanted to pick out chicks) and we headed down to the Littleton store. We should have verified that they got Araucanas (Easter Eggers) because when we got there we found out they hadn't got those ones yet! So we drove up to the Westminster store. They did have Araucanas! 

Lilly and the chick she picked out

Lilly picked out one, and Rhett picked out one. Lilly held the box and sang to them on the way home.

Chick Pen

Rhett built a pen for them. It's huge, but we plan on raising over two dozen chicks (they aren't all for us) so they will have plenty of room to grow! It is lined with pine shavings. 

Pine Shavings for the bottom
of the chick pen

The chicks need to be kept under a heat lamp kept between 95 and 100 degrees for the first week. You decrease the temperature by about 5 degrees every week until they grow their wings and can be kept outside. If they are panting, they are too hot and if they are chirping a lot and huddled together right under the heat lamp, they might be too cold. 

Several people have asked us if we heat our big girls (our grown chickens) coop in the winter. We do not. Chickens are cold weather hearty. If you do heat their coop they get used to the heat and if, for whatever reason, your heat fails, you could lose all of your chickens. 

Red Heat Lamp Bulbs

The little girls (chicks) do need the heat though. We hung their heat lamp, which we bought at Murdoch's, using chain that we bought at Walmart. There is a clamp on the lamp so you could just clamp it to the side of whatever box you keep the chicks in. The sides of our pen are taller than I wanted the lamp, so that is why I hung our lamp. We use a red heating bulb. The sad reasoning for this is, if a chick gets picked on and blood is drawn, the other chicks won't let up on it. The red bulb camouflages the blood, so if a chick gets picked on, they won't see the blood and they will leave it alone (hopefully). 

The chicks with the feeder and
waterer we are starting with.

The chickies need to have access to fresh water all the time. We used the waterer pictured right, which we bought at Murdoch's. The chicks will out grow it pretty fast though. When we get more chicks we will switch to a larger waterer. 

They also need to have access to a good chick food. The bag will tell you how long to feed them chick food. Ours says til 22 weeks but you can switch to egg layer feed in pellet form as soon as they start laying so they get the calcium and other essential nutrients necessary for making eggs. We will switch them to the big girls feed sooner because we are integrating them with the older chickens around 10-12 weeks. When they start living in the coop with the big girls, they would rather eat big girl food anyways (and the big girls would rather eat the chick food). The feeder we are using right now is fine for two chicks, but, like the waterer, we will switch to a larger one when we get more chicks. I put the waterer and feeder on a piece of particle board so they don't get as much pine shavings in them.




We love our chickens! If you have any questions or need any advice, we would love to share more of our knowledge with you!