Brooder Needs!

Check out my DIY's for my chickens:
DIY waterer: ...read here.
DIY feeder pipe: ...read here.

Matt here, Home Farm Ideas!

Today I want to talk to you about this video. I went out this day and got three baby chicks. One is a Rhode Island red the other two are Barred rocks. I wanted to get chickens to help me get rid of pests in my garden, to till the soil for me, and to have them produce as many eggs as they possibly could! Another side benefit of course would be all that rich manure! I had read some books about keeping chickens before I purchase them and so I guess you could say I was somewhat prepared;)

I really wanted to try and give my chickens as much healthy food as I possibly could and so that meant handpicking as many bugs as I could from my garden and around my house to give my girls! As a matter of fact in this video you should be able to see little worms crawling around in their brooder. I purposely put them there so that when my chickens were put in the brooder they would have live food immediately. I was also being very picky about the feed because you are what you eat.


I live in Huntington Beach, ca and I checked with the city to see if I could keep chickens before I got them. You can have 4 hens but no males. That was fine with me because I would have killed a loud bird anyways;)

I have heard over and over the hens need a rooster to get your hens to produce eggs but that is not true. They will still lay lots of eggs (avg for my birds is about 200 eggs per year each) without a rooster. The eggs will just be infertile. As a matter of fact, when roosters are around they tend to stress out the hens with how controlling they are and hens are known to lay less eggs.

I started my chicks out in my garage in a rabbit cage. There are some things you need to get before you get baby chickens so lets just have a look at what we will need:)


Things you will need:

• A chicken waterer of some kind. (Keep water very clean!!)
• A chicken feeder and try and get organic feed.
• A 100w hanging light.
• Wood shavings for bedding.
• A box or rabbit cage that they can grow into for the next 4-5 weeks!

Things to keep in mind:

To keep the water and the feed free from chicken poop make sure to raise there feeder and waterer off the ground high enough to reach the chicks back. If you can get it that high they can still eat but there butts will be to low for them to poop in the food or water:)

I have other videos I will be posting on what I did to try and keep there water and food clean. Also, I made it very easy to change there water and feed:)

Keep a close eye on them for about 4 weeks!

Like always God Bless:)

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