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.

If you are interested in raising chickens in your backyard, one of your primary concerns would probably be choosing a site where you would build your chicken coop. While you may have the grandest plans, designs, and equipment necessary for the coop, you would realize that they would be useless if you are not able to find a suitable site for which to build it on.

When trying to determine the feasibility of a site for your chicken coop there are some considerations that you would have to make. It’s just not enough to build a coop there simply because the space is available. You need to exert the additional effort to ensure that the place where you would lay your backyard chicken coop on would be perfectly suitable.

Some of the common considerations that you would have to make regarding coop location would be:

Safety:

You have to ensure that the chickens in your backyards would be protected from their predators. You may want to search a site in your backyard that is not too close to the edges so that the predators would not be able to easily wander near the chicken coop, and attack them.

You should also consider trying to place the chicken coop in close proximity to your main house. This is because this position would enable you to keep an eye on things even during the night time or when you are just relaxing inside your home. This kind of set up would also enable you to immediately rush to the coop in case something untoward happens to your chickens.

Noise:

The best chicken coop site would also be one that is a bit isolated from your neighbors. You must understand that the chickens in your backyard can be quite noisy and some of your neighbors may take offense in it.

You should try to search for a suitable location that is a bit farther than your closest neighbors’ home so that you would be able to minimize the loud sounds that are coming out of your chicken coop. You may also try to search for a location in your backyard that already has plenty of structures set up as it would help insulate the sound from coming out and reaching your neighbors.

Expansion

The last consideration that you may want to add to your list would be the opportunity to expand the chicken coop. When you are starting out, you would usually just have a small flock, but it can grow as your chickens begin laying some fertilized eggs.

While you can just sell the extra chicks or chickens, there may come a time when you would want to take care of more chickens. This means that you would need to expand or enlarge your current chicken coop. That’s why it may best to look at areas wherein you would still be able to expand your coop.

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.