Ordering Chicks

In my blog yesterday forgot to add some farm wisdom about ordering chicks so I thought I would do so today. After you decide you are going to raise chickens there are some pitfalls you should be aware of before you order. First, if you are ordering meat birds, you should secure your slaughter date first. When you place your order, your will have to decide if you are going to order a straight run. If you are ordering meat birds, I think a straight run is the way to go. This means you will be getting a mix of hens and roosters. The roosters will dress out larger than the hens. On our complete feed Cornish Cross Broilers should dress out at 4 ½ to 6 ½ pounds (the males will be larger than the females) in 8 to 9 weeks. If you are ordering layers and you want don’t want roosters, you should order just females which will mean they are more expensive because they must be sexed (this is done by a “sexor”). You still might end up with a rooster, however, if you buy a dozen straight run layers you will often end up with 3-6 roosters. When they get older you will have fewer hens and too many roosters and believe me, no one will take the roosters. Also, if you are order layers, decide on their living space as you will need to allow 3 or 4 square feet for each of them. It sounds like a larger space than you remember from your research, however, experience has taught me that when winter rolls around you will need more than the recommended living space if you want to avoid fighting, pecking, cannibalism, etc. We now allow 4 square feet per bird with a heat lamp. Also, many order a barnyard flock which usually is a mix of birds. I have fallen victim to this. Unfortunately, these birds often don’t mature at the same rate. The main pitfall of this is in feeding. If you change them over to layer feed too soon you run the risk of damaging the bird’s kidneys because too much calcium (needed for egg laying) can be toxic. For example your Rhode Island Reds will begin laying between 4-5 months, however, a Buff Orphington will begin laying in 6-7 months (note: if a website tells you 4 months or 28 weeks you may get one egg on the 29^th week. There is such a thing as theory and practice). Anyway, moving them to layer feed at week 28 will damage the Buff Orphington and possibility kill it. Additionally, we have found that not all birds get along and you will promote the afore mentioned bad behavior if they are housed together over the winter months.