Reptile & Amphibian Forums

has anyone raised chicks to vary the diet of their animals?
i was wondering what it would entail for about 20 (1-2 week old) chicks a day...
of course with chicks, may be easier to do in batches and freeze for later....
i do live in the country where it wouldn't be a livestock issue.
any experience? sugestions?

Check out these two sites;

http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/

http://www.ideal-poultry.com/

search for their specials --- males of egg laying breeds --- for instance.

for answers on how;

http://www.the-coop.org/

I can't cause I live in L.A., but I think raising chicks would be a hoot.

DeMak

I raise chicks because I love chickens and the ones I don't want go to my sav. Hatching out chicks to me is a pain in the @$$. It may be easier and cheaper to buy frozen feeder chicks. But if you have the time and $ incubating your own is very fun and interesting. You can buy fertile eggs from hatcheries or you can get a flock and let them do their thing and you take and incubate the eggs or you can get a breed that goes broody and let them hatch the eggs. You may want to get fertile eggs to give it a try before you get in too deep and have a bunch of adult chickens. Checl out this website, it is the best chicken forum I have found yet. They can answer all your ?s and I am sure that they will not care what you raise the chicks for. Most of the people have chickens to eat themselves.
www.poultryconnection.com

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Shannon in Reno
1.0 savannah monitor (Pombe-means "beer" in Swahili)
2.4 dogs
1.0 cat
5.32 rats
6.44 mice
7.50 chickens
1.2 beardies
0.1 black rat snake
~500 hissers
1 giant millipede
0.1 Chissel tooth kangaroo rat
1.1 rabbits
1.0 wonderful husband

lol I used to say same thing I lived in NY . Live in Florida now a city block distance from a farm .

After seeing a zillion chickens (infact saw a real nasty rooster fight yesterday-new rooster entered area) I am all "chickened out" aka tired of chickens .
Every other day some wind up in my yard .
They lay eggs there under the bushes and just leave them to rot . They dont sit on them like I thought they would

I still like the cows as they stay in the field due to the barbed wire.

You'll need A LOT of chickens to get 20 chicks a day.

chicks will hatch from artificially incubated eggs at around 21 days after hatching. If you let the mother incubate, you will end up with a lot less chickens, as she will not start incubating until all the fertilized eggs are laid, and she will not lay any more eggs until they've hatched (or so I've been told, I've never bred chickens). Also, incubating the eggs yourself ensures that you won't lose eggs to egg-breaking chickens or bad conditions.

Depending on the breed, you can expect anywhere from an egg a day to an egg every three days.

The general rule is one rooster per fifteen hens.

With this information, I'd say you would be well off to have a really good incubator, about 40 hens and for good measure, 4 roosters.

Of course, you'll need to keep some of the chicks to be replacements for the flock.

Starting out, you'll probably want to see about buying young adult chickens that have just started laying, because it can be a pain to wait until they start producing eggs.

I love chickens, but I spent a lot of money on just a flock of four. I couldn't imagine the costs of a flock of 44 (with housing, feeding, supplies, vaccinations and medications, etc)and feeding/raising the chicks until they were the size you wanted.

Of course, you can buy frozen chicks like I do. I get 25 for around $6 at Rodentpro (I think...).

Good luck if this is what you decide you want to do!

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~Sara~
5 ball pythons
1.0 Black-lined plated lizard (Lizzy Butt)
0.1 Burmese Python (Pixil)
lots of Rats
1.1 Dogs (Ozzie and Mandy)
0.1 Cat (Isis)
0.0.1 Synodontis Catfish (Big Spotty Fish)
0.1 Convict Cichlid
0.0.1 blood parrot cichlid
0.0.1 African Featherfin Catfish