Chicken Answers
Frequently asked questions answered by our poultry experts
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- Of wood shavings, newspaper (shredded?) or hay/straw, which bedding materials are best and which should be avoided?
Go with what you have access to should be the first rule. For the Brooder: If you can get good dry hardwood shavings or small chips (preferably poplar, maple, ash, etc not black walnut) they work very well. Packaging excelsior is also a good initial brooder bedding material. If you are using straw, you would do well to break it up some (place a bunch of it in a clean barrel and shred it with a string trimmer). Newspaper is fine — if you shred it some, it will offer more traction for the chicks. Ground corncobs are excellent. Avoid slick smooth surfaces and materials such as shredded plastic that has no moisture absorbing capacity. Sawdust isn't the best for chicks in a brooder because ingesting the small particles can easily back up their digestive system.
For the Coop: Larger chickens love to scratch through the litter so feel free to load up the coop with loose straw or mold-free hay. Shredded paper, ground corncobs, hardwood sawdust and mold-free leaves can also be used for chicken house bedding.
- How deep should the bedding be and how often does it need to be changed?
Change the bedding as it becomes soiled — a little at a time works fine. Pay particularly close attention to wet bedding — don't let it hang around in the brooded or the chicken house. I let the bedding in the chicken house build up to a depth of about a foot or so by adding more straw regularly. I change the bedding completely a couple of times a year and whenever I detect even a hint of ammonia. Bedding in the brooder gets completely changed with each set of chicks.
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- Do hen-raised chicks need any extra provisions similar to a brooder or will their mother provide for all their needs?
Their mother will provide shelter, heat and will teach them to forage. Obviously, you need suitable quarters for the hen and if you have an existing flock, watch closely to be sure that the hen and her brood have easy access to food and water. If there is any problem, give them a separate run and house until the chicks are feathered out.
- Can other bird/poultry species share the same brooder as chicks?
Yes they can when there is plenty of space but it isn't recommended. It is important to keep waterfowl separate from chickens and turkeys (behavior, size and sanitation are the principal reasons) and you should keep chickens and turkeys separate for disease issues, but many people successfully raise them together — some broody turkeys will raise chicken chicks and some broody chickens will raise turkey poults.
- Do brooders need perches?
Not generally. However if you plan to keep your birds in the brooder longer than usual (because it is -20 outside) you might add some low perches so they can express their roosting behavior.
- How much space does my brooder need per chick to be big enough to house my chicks until they move outside?
This depends on the breed and species. For medium-framed chickens, 0.5 square foot per bird should be plenty adequate at the beginning — you would likely want to up that to about 1 square foot per bird after a few weeks. You can use less space, but you will enhance the chances for cannibalism, fighting and piling losses. Some commercial brooder manufacturers publish capacity numbers in the range of 10 or more chicks per square foot. That is fine for day old chicks, but will become problematic as they grow.
- How tall/deep should my brooder be?
Your brooder ought to be 10 — 12 inches deep if you want your birds to be comfortable for the entire brooding period. It will take a couple of weeks for your chicks to figure out how to escape — so when in doubt make the brooder deeper or put a cover on it.
- What are the minimum and maximum number of chicks that could share one brooder?
This completely depends on the brooder size. The larger the brooder, the more heat lamps or hoovers you will need. Commercial-sized brooder houses can handle tens of thousands of chicks. You could effectively brood a single chick in any brooder, so long as the chick could easily find the heat lamp.
- At what age can my chicks move from the brooder to their outside coop? If I have several breeds in one brooder, will some be ready to go outside before others?
When your birds are fully-feathered, or nearly so, they should be fine to move to the outside coop. You should lower the brooder temp by about 5 degrees a week until the ambient daytime temp is reached (then you can turn off the heat lamp during the day). When you move the chicks outside, move them to their new house and pen them inside for a few days so they will learn to call it home. If you watch the feathering, you don't need to worry about how fast growing the various breeds are. Keep in mind here that if it is still freezing outside, you may want to postpone releasing your young birds or at the very least, keep a heat lamp on in their house.
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- If my chickens have a large area of land, will they return to their coop at night on their own? Will they return to their coop to lay eggs?
- In order to prevent "escapees," how tall should my fence be and do you recommend clipping wings?
- Will my chickens be okay in their outdoor coop during the winter?
- If my chickens have a large area of land, will they return to their coop at night on their own? Will they return to their coop to lay eggs?
Yes and no. If you imprint your chickens on their house by penning them inside for a week or so and offer plenty of comfortable perch space and nesting boxes they will consider the place home. Once the chickens claim the house, you can let them roam — you might keep an eye on them as dusk approaches and chase any stragglers in before dark. Watch for a few independent individuals that want to roost in the trees at night and chase them in too. You may find eggs scattered about — and a secretive, broody hen might set up a nest beneath a dense cedar tree, but for the most part, the flock will lay in the house. If you just release the chickens to the yard in the vicinity of the chicken house, some may take up residence, but many more will probably find favorite roosting trees. And then the owls and coyotes will find your chickens and pick them off one by one.
- In order to prevent "escapees," how tall should my fence be and do you recommend clipping wings?
Chicken runs can be quite successful with enclosures that are around 4 feet tall. I have had good luck using 3-feet of wire mesh topped with a single strand of electric fence wire (pulse charged at about 6500 volts). The electric keeps the coyotes and dogs from jumping in, and since the run is about an acre in size, the chickens rarely fly out, though most could do so. If you concentrate the chickens in ever smaller enclosures, you will want to increase the height of the enclosure or add netting over the top. Wing clipping is perfectly humane (clip only the outer couple of flight feathers) but I prefer not to do it because I figure that some flight ability might save them from dying in a predator encounter.
- Will my chickens be okay in their outdoor coop during the winter?
Yes, they will. You need to provide them with a snug house that's both ventilated and relatively draft free. Provide plenty of clean bedding and lots of high-calorie feed and warm water at least twice a day. If the outdoor temperatures dip below about 10 degrees below zero, you might consider offering supplemental heat in the form of a heat lamp and using a heated waterer. Chickens will freeze toes and combs when the temperatures drop into the negative realm for extended periods of time. And the more chickens you have huddled in the chicken house, the warmer they will collectively be.
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- What should I know about electric fencing?
Electric fencing, particularly electric net fencing makes an excellent and portable containment system for your chickens — and it will keep earthbound predators out as well. Once trained to electric wire fencing, you can use it to keep range birds more or less corralled as long as they aren't too crowded. Electric fencing is easy to set up, requires regular maintenance and relies almost entirely on the psychology of pain to work. Encounters with electric fencing are positively shocking, and therefore memorable. The coyotes in my territory only hit the electric fence once and then they avoid it. Setting up the fence requires posts, conductors (wire or braid that will carry electricity), insulators (keep the electricity in the wire from traveling to the ground through the posts — some posts are also insulators) and a charger. Check out these websites for all kinds of useful information on electric fencing: Gallagher Animal Management Systems, Premier 1 and Kencove Farm Fence Supplies.
- In order to prevent "escapees," how tall should my fence be and do you recommend clipping wings?
Chicken runs can be quite successful with enclosures that are around 4 feet tall. I have had good luck using 3-feet of wire mesh topped with a single strand of electric fence wire (pulse charged at about 6500 volts). The electric keeps the coyotes and dogs from jumping in, and since the run is about an acre in size, the chickens rarely fly out, though most could do so. If you concentrate the chickens in ever smaller enclosures, you will want to increase the height of the enclosure or add netting over the top. Wing clipping is perfectly humane (clip only the outer couple of flight feathers) but I prefer not to do it because I figure that some flight ability might save them from dying in a predator encounter.
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