Day Old Chicks
February 16, 2021 (Tuesday) - It’s been an exciting day on the homestead for us in the pacific northwest. As storms continue to rage and many north of us are still without power and water, we are blessed to have manageable inclement weather. Good thing, too, as we were able to pick up sixteen of the new chicks today from Jenks Hatchery in Tangent, Oregon.
For me, one of the coolest parts about getting our chicks from Jenks is that, about fifty plus years ago, my grandfather’s first entrepreneurial endeavor was as a chicken farmer and he would sell all the fertilized eggs to Jenks to hatch! Kind of a full circle situation where my grandfather would have the hens and roosters to create the fertilized eggs and then Jenks would hatch them and sell the chicks!
While I’m not sure I’ll always be getting chicks from Jenks as I have high hopes of being able to raise a multi-purpose meat bird down the road and be fully self-sustained in the chicken business, I am well aware that we may not ever be able to raise enough chicks at one time to create an efficient processing day. For the time being, the people at Jenks have been so kind and informative!
With that being said, these are our first laying hens that we will be purchasing from them. Last year was our first year raising meat birds and we ordered a whopping 550 birds from them throughout the summer. They were professional, orderly and toed the COVID-19 protocol lines. I am excited to order more meat birds from them, as soon as I sit down and pencil out our numbers, as I hope that we can do the Freedom Ranger variety as well as the Cornish Crosses again.
If you are picking up your birds from a local hatchery or at least one in your vicinity, then they will come in small cardboard boxes. Don’t worry if your chicks look crowded - they’re supposed to be! This is actually a carefully calculated number based on variety, age, and distance traveled, taking into effect the potential changes in climate, to ensure that they stay warm enough from each other’s body heat prior to getting to their final destination.
You will also see little plastic containers with green jelly in it. This is called GroGel and is vitally important to the health of your chicks as it is a natural supplement that contains all of the nutrients that they need in their first day of life, as well as to handle the effects of traveling. When you order chicks or pick up chicks from a Hatchery, they will always have this. The reason your farm store doesn’t have this is because those chicks are not necessarily a day old and, even so, they had their GroGel in their shipping container to get to the farm store.
As soon as I get the chicks home, I always get them in the brooder house as soon as possible. The first thing that I do is dip each of their beaks gently into the water so that they know where it is at. Then, as they recover from the shock, I set them next to the water but close enough to the heat lamp so that they can make a decision on which way they want to go. While this may seem cruel, I have heard horror stories on chicken forums on what may happen if you don’t do this. The first set of four chicks I got from the farm store last year I didn’t do this with, but I also have to take into account that they had a very small first box.
As the chicks are growing, I make sure they always have an abundance of food. These chicks I ordered vaccinated, but I will also add apple cider vinegar as a natural prebiotic/probiotic to help them fight off coccidiosis. If you want to do this, make sure to only add a teaspoon to a normal small waterer or two tablespoons max to a large waterer and never add it to a metal waterer - plastic waterers only.
If your waterer is too deep for your chicks they could fall in and drown. One way to combat this is by adding marbles or large rocks to the bottom. Large enough they can’t swallow them and big enough that, if they go for an accidental dunking, they can simply stand up.