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Hatching and raising baby chickens was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be. You may want to raise a few chickens for fresh eggs or even to sell from time to time. Currently we have about 25 chickens. There are 6 roosters and 19 hens. This past weekend we placed 34 eggs under a light for hatching. A Rhode Island Red hen was sitting on all 34 eggs! The other hens in the coup would lay eggs on top of her and she would scoop them under her body. After about 16 days she got off the eggs and refused to sit back down on them (she’s still young - one year). That’s when we placed them under the light. When trying to hatch eggs you should use an incubator, not a light - keep reading and you’ll find out why.  To hear a podcast of this article in windows media player click here.  Feel free to ask questions or leave comments at the end of this article.

Before we go any further with this article, allow me to post this brief update to cover a few important topics.  Recently one of our game hens hatched out 5 biddies.  They all follow her around and at night - they still roost on the ground snuggled up tightly together.  Now we have a young rooster (he’s about 12 months old) who was in the coup with the mother hen as the biddies hatched out.  It’s very interesting to observe that this rooster currently works just as hard as the mother hen at scratching around and finding food for the biddies.  They are quite a cute little family.

As of August 2008 the family of little biddies has grown and is now looked after exclusively by the rooster.  The hen started setting again about 30 days ago.  She had about 12 eggs under her and every single one just hatched.  How is it that she lays these eggs days apart but they still all hatch at the same time?  Mother nature is truly amazing.  I took a short video of the mother with her new 12 biddies and you can see them below…

*August 14, 2008  All the biddies were killed tuesday night.  We think it was a cat as some of the neighbors cats stalk our yard in the evening around dusk.  The mother banny hen failed to bring the chicks back to the pen (like she normally does) and instead bedded down in the bushes.  All the biddies were gone and the mother hen is limping.  Moral of the story - keep all chicks in a pen until half grown (with or without the mother hen).

Also, we’ve lost  most of our banny chickens.  We always let our chickens out of the coup during the day. Many of the bannys have disappreared around dusk.  We initially thought it was a hawk (which we witnessed nearly hauling off a young banny rooster once), but now it seems that a wild house cat from a nearby wooded area was stalking the game hen and chicks.  My father shot the cat while it was circling the group.  Which brings me to my suggestion of what type of chickens to raise.  Rhode Island Reds are, by far, the best chickens to raise.  Here’s why.  First off, R.I.R. aren’t interested in fighting.  Our rooster will fight only if another rooster is trying to work his way into his personal group of R.I.R. hens.  Otherwise the Rhode Islands are calm, quiet, and well behaved.  Also, they can eat just about anything and produce beautiful, large, brown eggs.  Another great feature regarding R.I.R’s is the fact that they are large chickens.  Therefore, hawks and wild house cats don’t stalk them - we’ve never lost a R.I.R. or a dominique.  The dominique rooster we had (which was a genuine beauty by the way) had a bad habit of attacking us.  The banny roosters possess this ailment as well.  So we’ve decided to get rid of all our chickens except the Rhode Island Reds!  However, we kept one banny hen and rooster and now we’re back to about 20 bannys if you count the 12 new biddies.  I think we’ll have a chicken give away soon!

Hatching eggs

You can’t hatch eggs that aren’t fertile. A hen can lay eggs even if there is no rooster present. However, the eggs won’t be fertilized and therefore won’t hatch. The rooster must mate with the hens in order to have fertile eggs. When the hen lays the egg she can sit on them or you can place them in an incubator. If she sits on them that’s fine. They should hatch out in about 21 days. Some of the eggs probably won’t hatch. You can throw those away. Once hatched the mother hen will watch after the chicks, attacking anything that gets near them! They will follow her around and she will help them find food all day long. At night she will roost on the ground, keeping the chicks under her. We have a couple of pet cats - they don’t bother our chickens but sometimes will stalk the chicks.

Hens prefer to sit on eggs outside of the chicken coup. We recently had two hens who were sitting on eggs in a wood pile in the yard. One was killed and the other barely escaped with her life. Another animal had stalked them in the night. For their own safety all chickens should be locked up in the chicken coup at night. So if the hen wants to sit on eggs she’ll have to lay in the coup.

We used a desk lamp once to hatch our eggs (bad idea keep reading), but some people use an incubator. The eggs are placed on a rag in the bottom of a plastic Tupperware dish. The lamp is placed close enough to the eggs to keep them just slightly warm. Do not get the eggs too hot!

***Update - Two of the eight eggs that hatched from sitting under the desk lamp ended up with physical deformities, mainly in their feet. Either they couldn’t walk at all or have trouble walking. So don’t use the lamp. I assume that the deformities occurred from the temperature reaching levels higher than mother nature requires.

Rhode Island Red rooster.

The Rhode Island Red rooster featured above seems to have a problem.  We’ve came to the conclusion that he is sterile.  We bought a new incubator a few weeks ago and none of the R.I.R. eggs will hatch.  Using an incubator takes the guess work out of the temperature setting. So if possible you should use one. Around 21 days after being laid the chicks should begin cracking the egg. During this time you can hear the baby chicks chirp. Do not attempt to help the chick crack the egg. The hatching process can take a full 24 hours. So be patient and let nature run its course. From the time the first one hatches, any other egg that will hatch should begin to crack within 24 hours.

In May of 2008 we actually bought an incubator.  My dad has been putting all of the R.I.R. eggs into it hoping they will hatch.  We’ve incubated dozens with no success and have concluded that the Rhode Island Red rooster in the above photo is one sterile dude!  A banny hen can hatch out 12 of 12 and we can’t successfully hatch any of his offspring.  Dad’s talking about finding another Dominique rooster since the R.I.R. rooster can’t fill the job requirements we made plain to him when we took him on.

Once the eggs hatch

 We leave the light on for our chicks because the lamp provides much needed heat. Baby chicks need to be kept warm.  You should have some water and food starter in the box when the chicks hatch out. During the winter we keep the light on the chicks for the first three weeks or until they have adequate feathers. Baby chicks can die if left out in the cold weather. You can buy chick starter at the co-op or feed store in your community. The chicks should be fed starter for five to six months. You should gradually add adult food to the mix and wean them off the starter as they near adult size.

If the hen hatches the chicks she will help them find food. Just make sure there is some food and water available in the coup. If you are box raising just keep fresh starter and water - add fresh every 3 to 4 hours. Chickens like fresh food, especially insects and worms. We kept our chicks in a three foot by two foot pen for the first three weeks. After that we moved them to a ten by ten pen until they are big enough to place in the community of adult chickens. Without a mother hen to protect them - the chicks may not survive outside the coup.

Hatched chicks should begin eating within two to three hours. They don’t need a hen to show them how to eat, it’s just something they naturally do. Also, it’s common for the chicks to fight amongst themselves. They can be quite rough on each other.

Also, it’s nearly impossible to tell which are rooster and which chicks are hens. As they get a little older (2 to 6 months) the rooster begins developing a distinctive larger red comb on top of their beak and head. The roosters also often have this red “baggage” hanging underneath their bill as well. Some will cock -a-doodle at four months - and some may wait until eight or nine months old.

Adult chickens

Adult chickens are easy to manage. Ours strut around the yard scratching around in leaves and straw, searching for insects and grubs. Dogs can come after chickens and kill them. Also, we have a real problem with a hawk in our area. The hawk has killed and hauled off at least two chickens so far. The other day we heard the chickens clucking wildly. We walked out to find a hawk on top of our youngest rooster. When the hawk saw us it took off and left the rooster. The rooster didn’t move for ten minutes, I thought he was dead. I reached down to grab him and he jumped up and ran under the tool shed. He survived this time but the hawk is a constant problem. The other option is to keep the chickens penned up all day in the coup. But they love getting outside so much we let them out.

It’s been our experience that the following chickens are a bit more troube than Rhode Island Reds (the best to raise in my opinion and they produce large brown eggs). The following make rough bed fellows and the rooster will attack humans - particularly if you hand raise them like pets (this makes the roosters hate you more for some reason); Dominique, Game, and the banny (not sure if banny is spelled right but that’s what we call them - the banny is small and often black with the rooster being more colorful. They are small, lay small eggs, and can have quite a temper). To protect ourselves we use a large hand held net (like one used for pulling Bass out of the water when fishing but has a thicker net) when we are around the Dominique - he’s big and can mount a pretty serious attack - he thinks he owns all the Rhode Island Red hens. Here’s an excellent source for chicken sizes, colors, and eggs separated by breed.

The banny rooster is small and colorful - this is the nice one of the bunch. Notice his spurs (about an inch long) facing each other just above his feet.

When building a chicken coup use one inch wire and cover the top of it in tin or shingles. Half of our pen is surrounded with tin to provide a break from bad weather and wind. The base of the pen should be protected so that animals can’t dig under the side walls. Dogs and foxes will try and dig under the wire. We positioned a pine tree limb in the coup about four feet off the ground. At night all the chickens fly up on the limb to sleep. Make sure and lock the coup at dusk each night. The chickens should naturally go back into the pen each evening. Keeping the feed and water in the pen will help train them to this habit. Feel free to leave questions or comments below. 

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Tags: baby, biddie, chickens, raise

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