Raising Chickens :D

Hello fellow players and staff members!

If you have not heard, I have taken on the responsibility of raising chickens. My family bought six, two day old Black Star hens a few months back, and I'd now like to share my experience with all of you.

First of all, Black Star chickens are a type of sex link chicken. This means that the males are a different color than the females once they hatch.

Before we bought our chickens, we had to build a container called a brooder. Brooders are like small, indoor chicken coops without a run (the fenced in area for chickens to peck and run around in while not inside of a coop). Depending on the breed and the amount of chickens that will be in the brooder, the size may vary. Our brooder was recycled from a somewhat large end table with two doors on the front. We took out the glass in the doors and replaced it with chickenwire. We cleaned the brooder once every week and refilled the water and food as needed.

As a note, do not use cedar wood flakes for bedding in a chicken coop or brooder, for the fragrant oils in the wood can cause breathing problems for chickens later in life.

I will continue with more tips and experiences in future posts ^^

Wow Flower Power, this is such a brilliant, insightful and mature post, I love it!!!  Thank you so much for sharing some of your experience with raising baby chicks, I can't wait to see more.  ^__^

I know you haven't mentioned the pasty butt issue, but hopefully you'll get a chance to describe how you saved your chickies from that. ^^

Also, I know you were also interested in co-raising crickets to help feed them later when they get older, but it was already a handful to raise the chickens alone.  Any future plans on how you'll accomplish that, or will you just simply buy or catch your feeder bugs instead?  ^^

That's really cool! My friend had some chickens a while ago, I forget why, but he doesn't have them anymore. Good luck raising them!