hatching chicks

how to hatch chicks

Hatching Chicks

If you already have chickens (or know someone who does), there’s always the option of hatching your own chicks. Of course, you’ll also need a rooster to get fertile eggs. Check your zoning regulations; some places allow hens, but not roosters. Hens will lay perfectly well without one.

You’ll also need a broody hen. Broodiness—the instinct to sit on eggs until they hatch—has been bred out of a lot of chickens, but we always had one or two who would begin to sit tight on the nest and peck if we tried to remove their eggs. Bantams are famously broody, and a bantam hen will hatch other hens’ eggs.

You can hatch replacement chicks yourself with a home incubator. Eggs take 21 days to hatch. An incubator must be monitored diligently; chicks left too long after hatching will die of dehydration or picking. On the whole, we found it best to leave hatching to the hen.

(Did you know that there are best times for setting eggs under a hen or in an incubator? You can find out more about setting chicken eggs by the Moon’s Sign here.)

Raising Chicks

Tending baby chicks isn’t difficult, nor need it be elaborate. As well as chick starter feed and clean water, they need a draft-free brooder pen with a red brooder lamp on at all times. This keeps the temperature at 92°F (33°C) at 2 inches above the floor. (It also reduces pickingi out, reduce the temperature by 5°F per week until they are 6 weeks old, then switch their feed from chick starter to grower mash.

Tips for Keeping a Happy Chicken Coop

• If you don’t yet have one, here’s how to build your own chicken coop.
• Many sources say that you can’t keep a flock of mixed ages. We never had a problem with older chickens picking on younger ones or vice versa. Our hens raised their chicks happily in the flock. Most picking is the result of overcrowding. Give your chickens lots of space.
• Young chicks need to be close to water and food at all times. Spread a 4-inch layer of pine shavings on the floor, then lay several layers of newspaper over that. Scatter lots of chick feed on the paper and also have feeding troughs filled in the pen. Remove a layer of paper every day, and by the time the last layer is gone, the chicks will have found the feeding trough.
• Always use red bulbs; injury doesn’t show under red light. Under white light, any bloody spot immediately attracts pecking. Chicks will cheerfully and efficiently peck each other to death.
• Block corners of the pen with cardboard to make wider angles that are harder for chicks to pack up in. (You could also make a circular pen.) This prevents suffocation.
• Ensure that waterers are shallow and cleaned daily to avoid having chicks drown. My hatchery recommends one gallon-size waterer for every hundred chicks. I always had two or three, even for fewer chicks, so that they wouldn’t crowd.
• With pullets, I used one waterer for every six to eight chickens and a feed trough long enough to accommodate all of them at once .