Just as human babies would have special needs that are different from the adults, the same can be said about the chicks and their chickens. That is why you should pay attention to the special concerns and needs of your chicks when raising them to ensure that you would have a good flock. After all, you won’t have a good flock if your chicks are sickly or are prone to diseases.

When people hear about special care, they are immediately turned off or become scared that they are going to do something that is very difficult. The good thing is that this should not be the case when it comes to chicks. Yes, you would have to exert some extra effort but this is not too difficult and would really go a long way in protecting your chicks.

Here are some of the things that you would have to do to ensure that your chicks would have good health:

Brooding:

Brooding is the act of providing the warmth and space for your chicks. Usually, the hens would be the ones who would do it for the chicks. However, there are many instances wherein the mother hens would suddenly lose interest in brooding and leave the chicks on their own.  Of course, you would also have to do brooding work if you had purchased chicks to start your flock and have no hens yet.

When there is no hen to do the brooding, it would be important for you to provide them with the heat that they need before their feathers would fully develop. You could purchase artificial brooders which uses infrared heat lamps that could act as an artificial heat source for the chicks until their feathers would fully coat their bodies.

Feeding:

The chicks would also have special needs when it comes to feeding them. This is because their body’s organs have not been fully developed yet to be able to handle the regular food that you give to chickens. Aside from this, the chicks would usually need some additional supplements and vitamins in order to grow well.

You can purchase special starter and grower feeds at the local pet supply store so that you would have something to feed them. Another is that you should also purchase some chick sized grit, which would aid in their digestion of the food that you will provide them.

Protect from other chickens:

Another issue that you would have to contend with is that some chickens in your coop may become quite aggressive to your chicks. You should try to provide them with a separate area to run around on so that they would not be picked on by the bigger chickens inside the coop.

By putting in the extra effort to protect your chicks, you are ensuring that you would have a good, strong, and healthy flock in the future.

You may already be familiar with the term “pecking order”, a term that denotes the hierarchy between the different people in a group, but did you ever wonder where it came from? When you think about it, it is actually related to the chickens that you are raising in your backyard.

The term actually pecking order comes from the top chickens being able to feed first before the underlings.  You see, these chickens actually have a hierarchal society and they have a way which determines who is the leader and who are the chickens beneath.  The chickens would take some time and familiarization with each other before this setup is fixed or determined among themselves. This actually helps in the organization of the chickens in your coop.

Knowledge about the pecking order is important especially for people who want to integrate new chickens into the flock. This is because once you decide to put additional chickens, the hierarchy or the pecking order can get disrupted which  would ultimately lead to chaos and infighting in your coop.

It is important then to be able to know how to properly integrate new chickens into an existing flock. This would ensure that you would be able to maintain the peace and that your chickens would not have to be aggressive with one another.

Here are some steps that you should do when integrating new chickens to an existing flock:

Choosing the chickens to add:

You should not just get any other chicken and then introduce them to your flock. You should first select a good one based on size and age. Usually, an existing flock would be more accepting if you would introduce a chicken that is of similar size or of similar ages to your hens.

If you try to introduce younger or smaller chickens, then you are risking that they would be picked on by the older chickens and they may not be able to defend themselves. A chicken that is similar in size or age would mean less fighting would take place.

As much as possible, just add hens:

This is related to selecting which chickens to add. When selecting, you should just integrate hens and not roosters. Remember that chicken coops have a pecking order, and that roosters are often the leaders of the coop. Having more roosters would lead to the two roosters in the coop fighting over the leadership or ownership of the flock.

Try adding the hens at night time:

You have a better chance at a peaceful coexistence if you add the hens at night time. Sometimes the chickens won’t notice that the new fowl have been added to their flock.

You can just place them on the perch with the other chickens while they are sleeping. You may notice some unfamiliarity, but the chickens would then come to accept them as members.

As you would probably understand once you start raising backyard chickens, this hobby is not something wherein you can just sit still and watch! When you are raising backyard chickens, it is not enough to just give them food and water all day. You would have to manage your flock if you want them to be able to grow healthy and become very productive.

When you are managing your flock, there are a variety of factors that you would always have to keep on checking. This is because once an oversight happens you are risking that your chickens would become listless and very unproductive. Some chickens would not even lay their eggs because of the stress caused by a mismanaged flock.

You should pay attention to these three things when you are trying to manage your flock of chickens in the backyard:

Learn about the Coop Density:

Density refers to the number of chickens inside the coop in relation to how much area or space there is available. Ideally, you would be able to give a space of 3-4 square feet per chicken inside the coop. However, there are some cases wherein the owner would forget about it and would just keep on adding chickens to the coop or hatching chicks without the intention of selling them.

When this happens, the coop can become too dense for your chickens and they may not be able to perform as well as they would like to. You should also consider that the risk of spreading infectious diseases is higher if you have a tight coop. That is why you may want to give away or sell of some of your chickens in order to reduce coop density.

You should check your least performing chickens and either give them away to your friends or cook them for their meat.

Understanding the Pecking Order:

Another thing that you should observe once you are managing your flock of backyard chickens would be the pecking order. By observing pecking order, we mean observing which among the chickens are assuming leadership status among the flock.

This is important because you should cater your actions according to how the leader would usually do things. Chickens are usually good followers of their leader and being able to understand how the flock head moves would make you understand what kind of changes you would have to make.

Lastly, you should try to avoid giving away or selling off the leader as this may lead to chaos inside your coop.

Aggressive Chickens:

You should also try to observe if there are some backyard chickens that are overly aggressive to the other members of the flock. There can be some who are extra aggressive and would attack other birds even without any good reason.

You may want to pick off these chickens to give them away or cook as meat, as they could easily disrupt the harmony of your flock.

These factors are only basic things that are important for ensuring a good flock. Of course, there are still plenty of other things that you would have to observe when you are managing your flock of backyard chickens.

One of the more popular activities nowadays would be raising chickens in your backyard. Many people have seen the benefits that they could get from having these animals in their yard and have started their own flocks. Of course, if you are starting out your own collection of chickens, then you would probably encounter chicks.

Beginners would usually encounter chicks in a couple of manners. The first is that they would get them as the starters for their flock. They would be the ones who you would have to grow and raise so that you would be able to raise adult chickens in your backyard. You may also encounter them if you have a meat bird breed and you would use the offspring of your adult chickens as the source of the meat.

You should know however that the needs of your chicks are very different from that of your adult chickens. That’s why you would need to provide them with additional care in order for them to grow well enough to be productive members of your flock:

Here are some of the proper ways for you to handle your chicks:

Ensure that your brooders are at the proper temperature:

As mentioned in this site before, brooding is necessary for your chicks. Brooding is the act of the warmth that your chicks would need, which simulates a hen who warms her children.

You should always try to prepare your brooding area and equipment before putting your chicks in them. This means that you should ensure that the brooding area is enclosed to prevent the entry of predators such as cats and rats that could eat your chicks.

The brooder should also be of proper temperature. Your heat source should be able to provide enough heat for all the chicks that you would put in the brooder. You can control the temperature by selecting the proper bulb wattage and placing it at the recommended height.

You would use the breeder for around 25 days and wait until the chicks are all fully feathered before you can transfer them to another part of the coop.

Provide them with Clean Drinking Water:

Chicks would really need a lot of hydration during their formative weeks. This would ensure that their organs would be healthy enough to develop. That is why giving them a fresh supply of water  is a must if you want them to be in good physical shape.

You should always try to replace the dirty water with fresh water every day. This is because standing water can become a hotbed of bacteria and could contaminate the water. This could lead to your chicks becoming sick because of their not yet developed immunity system.

Vaccination:

Lastly, you should also give your chicks the proper vaccines to ensure their good health. There are vaccines that should be given on the seventh day as well as the 14th day of the chick.

You should coordinate with a veterinarian to ensure that you are giving them the right medication as well as the right dosage.

If you are raising some chickens in your backyard, then one of the things that you would have to continually do to ensure that your chickens are in good condition would be to clean their coop. Having a messy and unsanitary coop could lead to a load of trouble for both you and your chickens.

If you would not clean your coop, you would risk that your chickens would be infected by disease carrying bacteria and would get sick and even die. Worse, the bacteria of an unclean chicken coop could also be the cause of some human diseases. T the stench of an un-sanitized coop could also make local city inspectors ban you from raising chickens.

Here are some

Insects especially Roaches:

One of the most common infestations that happen to chicken coops come from cockroaches. While 1 or 2 roaches is not a problem (you could even feed them to your chickens as they seem to like it), it would be quite difficult if it gets out of hand.  That is why you should take measures in order to prevent them from infesting your chicken coop.

The first step that you would do is to secure the food and other materials that can become breeding grounds for these pests. You should put your feeds in an airtight container so that the insects would not be tempted to live in them.

You could also try using natural insecticides to deter some types of insects from entering your chicken coop. However, you must control the amount of pesticide that you use so that you would not endanger the lives of your chickens.

Nesting Box Bedding:

Another part of the coop that could get messy and unsanitary would be the nesting box bedding. The nesting material could get worn out with repeated use of the hens. That is why you should try to replace them immediately so that the chickens would not use them as nothing more than a dropping area.

Droppings in the Perch area:

One of the messiest areas of the coop would probably be the perch area. This is because your chickens would be staying there when they are sleeping and would often just release their fecal matter in that area. You must ensure that the manure is cleaned regularly to avoid the unpleasant odor as well as the risk of infection or contamination.

You may want to install a droppings board underneath the perch so that the task of cleaning it would become much easier. You would just have to slide out the board and collect the droppings so that you would not have to stoop under the perch or move it out of the way during cleaning sessions.

Of course, aside from these three, you must also try to do a general cleaning of the coop at least once or twice a year. This would ensure that you would be able to get every nook and cranny of the coop and would allow the chickens that you are raising in your backyard to have a clean and sanitized environment to move around in.