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What Age of Chicken Should You Start With?

25 16:36:32

If you havedecided to keep some chickens in yourbackyard or gardenyou will haveto decide what age of chicken or hen to start with. You basically have threeoptions, each has its advantages and disadvantages:

 

Day old chicks

Baby chicks are adorableand usually cost just a few dollars each. Starting with chicks is very rewarding asyou can watch them through all their growth phases and you can tame them fairly easily if you handle them correctly from a young age. Another fun thing about day old chicks is that you can order mixed-breed lots and watch a variety of colours and feather characteristics develop.

However baby chicks are extremely delicate and even experienced poultry raisers lose a percentage of their stock. Older birds have a much higher survival rate. Chicks are very susceptible to a number of health conditions, variations in temperature and are easy prey for anything, including cats.

Starting with day old chicks also requires setting up a brooding area that needs to be carefullymaintained,whereas older birds are a bit more independent.If fresh eggs are your ultimate goal, then it will be four to five months before they will start laying.

It's also hard to determine the gender of a newly hatched chick (even for professionals). If you are raising chickens in the city and are not allowed to have roosters, or you don'twish to keep a rooster, you may get a male in the bunch and therefore you will need to have a Plan B for when he grows up.

A pullet is a female chicken that has not yet begun to lay eggs (usually from 4-20 weeks old) and a cockerel is its male counterpart. If your only goal with chickens is eggs, you don't need any male birds.

Pulletsare bigger and stronger than chicks, but are still young enough to be easily tamed. They handle the stress of moving well and have usually developed some resistance to coccidiosis and other poultry problems.

They are also closer to maturity, so you won't have to wait as long to start getting eggs. At this age, it's usually pretty easy to distinguish the pullets from the cockerels so you probably won't get any surprises with most breeds. With some breeds it's not so easy.

Howeverbirds of this age are a few dollars morethan chicks. If you orderpullets from a hatchery or breeder, they are much more complicated and expensive to ship. You will probably need to buy them in person and it's not always possible to locate a seller with birds of the right ageavailable exactly when you want them.

Laying Hens and Adult Birds

With fully grown birds, all the hard work has been done and hens will either be laying already or close to itand their personalities will be developed.Also by this age there will be no surprises with respect to gender,as it is pretty clear by this stage which are males and which are females.

If you plan on showing or breeding poultry, there is no guessing about how a bird will turn out and you will be able to see itsspecific characteristics. It is also possible to get adult birds cheap or even free from a breeder,as people who show chickens will sometimes give away birds that don't win consistently. They may not be show winners, but make perfectly wonderful pets and egg layers.

Fully grown chickens are also very good at defending themselves against cats (though not against dogs or other predators).

However fully grown chickens are the most expensive, because the person who raised them has already put significant time and expense into feeding and raising them. They are expensive to ship if you need to order by mail, and don't travel as well as day-old chicks.

So you will have to decide how much time you want to put into getting your birds started and where you are going to get them from.