Keeping chickens isn’t just for professional farmers or dedicated homesteaders. As egg prices rise and an emphasis on food provenance grows, backyard flocks are booming. Not only do chickens provide fresh eggs and meat, but they’re also excellent pest control (goodbye, ticks!), will happily eat your kitchen scraps, and create top-grade fertilizer for your garden.
Best of all, caring for a flock of your own is easier than you think. We’ve put together a helpful guide that coversall you need to know about each stage of ownership, from selecting to sheltering to caring for your new avian crew. With these tips from Purina nutritionist Patrick Biggs, PhD, and Shelby Diebold of Viney Grove Goats farm in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, plus the Purina® Farm to Flock® feed system, you’ll be prepared when the sound of chirping chicks becomes impossible to resist.
Know Your Local Laws
It’s tempting to rush out and get some adorable baby chicks, but first you’ll need to check your town, village, or city’s ordinances surrounding chicken keeping. These guidelines will shed light on everything from how many birds you can have to whether or not roosters are allowed, coop building rules, and permit necessities.
Pick Your Perfect Breeds
There are hundreds of chicken varieties, so knowing if you want high-yield egg-layers, meat birds, or docile pets will help narrow down your options. Make sure to also take your climate into account, as some birds are more cold and heat-tolerant than others.
Not all breeds are compatible together, either, as Diebold learned when she began raising her first flock. “A friend had some Silkie chickens and they were getting bullied by the other chickens,” Diebold says. “I wanted chickens that would all get along.”
Diebold decided on Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rocks, and Black Copper Marans for her starter flock of eight. “They’re super hardy, easy to take care of, family-friendly, and they have cute personalities,” she says. If you have kids or lots of other animals, avoid territorial and harder to handle breeds like Rhode Island Reds, Old English/American Game, and Sumatras.
Decide on a Flock Size
Map out the portion of your land that you’ll devote to the chickens—they’ll each need two to three square feet of indoor space and five to 10 square feet of outdoor space. This will give you an idea of how many adult chickens you can accommodate, as will your budget for their food and the reason you’re raising them. If you intend to keep them as pets or for their eggs, you should plan for the flock to be with you for their full lives (five to 10 years), so it may be best to begin with four to six chicks and grow from there. If they’re meat birds, you’ll raise them for six to 12 weeks, so you might find you can house and feed more birds at a time if you’re not processing year-round.
By the Numbers
Your egg-layers will start producing in 18-20 weeks, and will require about two pounds of Purina® Farm to Flock® 18% Layer Hen Food per bird, per week. Depending on the breed, hens can lay around six eggs per week in their first year (about 200-250 eggs). Production slows during darker winter months and each year as they age.
Set Up Their First Housing
Your chicks will need to be in a nursery until they’re about six to eight weeks old. You’ll need to DIY this enclosed draft-free space (a small shed, box, tub, or fenced-off section of a room), so make sure you have capacity to allow for three to four square feet per chick. Keep it warm with a heat lamp, spread wood shavings for bedding, and add chick feed and water daily.
Diebold says a little observation goes a long way in keeping your chicks comfortable. “A lot of people ask, ‘Why are they huddled up in a tight little wad?’ or ‘Why are they all super spread out?’” she notes. “It's based on the heat that you're putting in there. Some people overheat their chickens and lose them. So you just have to watch that and adjust to their formations.”
Curate Your Coop
Your chicks go through rapid growth in the first six weeks of life, so they’ll need twice as much living space by this point.Pre-fabricated or build-your-own coop designs range from tractor and wagon styles for mobility (if you plan to rotate your flock to different spots), or sheds if you’re set on a stationary structure. The coop—which can be purchased at farm or pet supply stores, or online—will need areas for feed and water, roosts (a.k.a. elevated sleeping perches) with one square foot of space per bird, and nesting boxes. “Make sure you get a coop that's easy to clean out and easy to feed them in,” Diebold says. “It’ll change your experience.”
Diebold’s main factor in her coop purchase was to keep the chickens safe from predators. “That always worries me because we live in the country, but I made sure that we got a coop that is predator-proof,” she says. “You can lock them up two different ways. There's no open bottom where anything can dig underneath when they're asleep at night.” If your coop doesn’t come pre-proofed, protect against burrowing animals with galvanized welded wire (which doesn’t stretch like chicken wire) buried six inches beneath the perimeter of the structure, and cover all mesh screens with hardware cloth.
Don’t Cut Corners on Their Feed
There are three main stages of chicken development: starter, grower, and layer, as well as dietary considerations for each stage. “The most important decision you're ever going to make for your birds is what you feed them when you bring them home,” Biggs says. “Give them the nutrition that they need so that they can grow and develop properly.”
Diebold started her chicks off with the Purina® Start & Grow® feed. This feed meets the needs of starting and growing chicks, so she kept her chicks on this diet until 18 weeks of age, and then she transitioned feed to Purina® Layena® layer feed, slowly adding the grower feed and reducing the starter feed. The seamless transition made it easier to help maintain feed intake and to support the birds’ digestive systems to adapt.
For new chicken keepers or those looking to simplify their feeding strategy, the new Purina® Farm to Flock® system is designed to transition with your chicks. Purina® Farm to Flock® is a stage-based feeding system with whole-food goodness right-sized for each stage of chicken development — from starter to grower to layer.
For your hatchlings, Purina® Farm to Flock® Starter Food comes in a crumble size perfect for tiny beaks, and has all the protein, antioxidants, and essential nutrients they’ll require as they grow to seven times their hatch weight in the first 28 days.
As a transitional feed around the four-to-five week mark, Purina® Farm to Flock® 18% Protein Grower Food adjusts for the birds’ lower growth rate and higher need for calories, with mini pellets that are still easy to eat. Once your chickens hit 18 weeks, upgrade to the larger pellets of Purina® Farm to Flock® 18% Protein Layer Hen Food, which nutritionally supports the birds into the egg-laying stage and beyond.
With Purina®, you don’t have to worry about adding extra supplements or calculating for new percentages of protein—the perfect balance is included within each mixture. “The great thing about this feed is that as that bird grows, we can adjust the size of the ingredients instead of overloading that first feed with a bunch of things that your bird couldn't eat in those first few weeks while she's still small,” Biggs says. “As she grows, the diet changes with her.”
Purina® Farm to Flock® is your first step to raising happy, healthy chickens.
