Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i know that this is the cockatiel forum, but i've heard a little talk about chickens here and was wondering if anyone knows how to go about getting some chicken chicks.

we own four acres of land and my boyfriend just told me that he was looking for some chickens for me as a two year anniversary present, but that he can't find anyone with chicks. one more thing, we have two guinea hens, would everyone possibly get along? thanks!

What kind of chickens are you looking for? And how many?

I'd really love to have chickens again (but I am allergic to all birds, so that's right out). I have so many differnt breeds that I find attractive.

There are a number of hatcheries around the country that will ship you chicks of any number of breeds, which is one way to go. The survival rate is fairly good, but do be advised that sometimes that goes awry.

If you have two guineas, do they incubate eggs? Another route is to buy fertile eggs of the desired species and have those shipped to you. You could either put them under the guineas when they are broody, or get an incubator and hatch them yourself. There are some good chicken incubators on the market these days for under $40.

Since chickens are not dependant on their parents they way that psittacine chicks are, by keeping them warm and protected, supplying small sized scratch feed for them, etc. you should be able to raise them quite easily. The ones that I raised from chicks were very human-oriented. One even would beg at my feet to be picked up and ride around in the crook of my arm.

i've done a little bit of research and there are an awful lot of hatcheries with chicks of all sorts of species available year round, but they'll only ship them in groups of 25 or more. i'd been thinking about three; i know people who've received them as presents around easter so i assumed it was commonplace to purchase a few chicks at a time. i basically live in teh city but on four acres of protected wetland so the birds would be fine but i can't find any small farms or the like.

remy, if you're allergic to birds how comes it that you're so knowlegable?

i've never seen eggs before from the guineas, bu i've heard that they're usually poor parents and tend to accidently kill most of their babies. i don't even know where they came from, actually. we've lived here to 11 years and last year they wandered into our yard and never left. we're surrounded by suburbs adjacent to pontiac, michigan. i'm glad they came =).

also, they chase kids off of our property. nobody minds the kids, but its still funny.

If you're looking for a specific type (as opposed to generic chickens), you might try eBay, or maybe better, EggBay. I sometimes cruise eBay at least to see what people are offering, and you can sometimes buy small quantities of eggs from private individuals (between 4 and a dozen), and then hatching them out in an incubator would be in order.

Hm....EggBay seems to be temporarily disabled, I know not why or for how long. Many interesting links from this site--

http://www.geocities.com/KelliAnn293/great_links.htm

You also might see if there are any local petting zoos that have chicks or chickens for sale. The local one around here offers their surplus chicks for sale every spring (Silkies mostly here) Also farm papers often carry ads in spring for people selling chicks locally. I also cruise the Sunday papers want ads for what kind of livestock is for sale (or I used to anyway).

If you are not particular about the kind of chicken (I am not fond of Leghorns or the production varieties that go by numbers. I prefer some of the strains with established dispositions.), you can also try feed/farm stores in spring. They often order up chicks for local people and will sell them out in smaller lots some times.

It's a long story about myself and birds. Had them my whole life, everything from Budgies to ducks, geese (or goose, a Toulouse I saved from the dinner table), pheasants, pigeons and on to raising Budgies, Cockatiels, & Bourke's Parakeets before I developed hypersensitivity pneumonitis and landed in the hospital on oxygen because of my severe allergy to birds (from long exposure). I am hereditarily one of the 5-15% of the population susceptible it turns out.

So no more birds for me.

Now I'm trying to content myself with the guinea pigs, dogs, horses, and turtle that I've rescued. I still come on the bird boards to answer questions from my long history of misadventures in bird keeping in case it will prevent anyone else from having a tragedy.