What I Wish I Knew BEFORE Getting Backyard Chickens

What I Wish I Knew, Even Before I Got Started With Chickens

I'm a backyard chicken educator, also known as the president of chickenlandia. Raising chickens has been the best way for me to find peace and joy in my life, and I want to help you find that too. I have been teaching people about how to take care of their chickens for a long time now-over a decade, and believe me, I have seen and heard everything. I have heard everything, but I will say there's really nothing that can replace personal experience. And you know, I have made some mistakes. So that's why today, I want to tell you what I wish I knew, even before I got started with chickens, so that it can help you to have a different experience and a better experience.

Baby Chicks – Are They Eating and Drinking?

okay, Baby Chicks, I'm moving over here because my roosters are being so loud, so when I got my first batch of baby chicks, I did not know that it is super important to keep an eye on them in that first 24 hours. I mean like watch them like a hawk and make sure that each and every one of them is eating and drinking. Baby chicks have about 48 hours after they hatch to get to food and water. Now, if a baby chick is born underneath a mother hen, they hatch at different times within like a 48 hour time frame. Baby chicks can during that time absorb the nutrients from the from that they had from within the egg, so they have a little window where they don't have to eat or drink and they'll stay under their mother during that time.

And then, once they're all out and they're all fluffy, the mother hand comes out and she will take her baby chicks to food and water and start teaching them how to chicken. Okay, but in a hatchery situation, which is where I got my baby chicks from, I did, I got them from a farm store. I wasn't like really thinking okay, they came from a hatchery, they've been delivered here, they've gone through the mail. They've had this very stressful experience, and because of that you really have to keep an eye on them for those first 24 hours to make sure that they're eating and drinking, because if they don't eat and drink within that time frame, they can have something called starve out, okay, and that's basically failure to thrive for baby chicks, which is what you don't want you can get. You can end up with with dead chicks if that happens. So make sure your baby chicks are eating and drinking.

Adult Chicks

If they're not, you may want to check out. I do have a video. It's called like um. How to, How to, What is it called? I can never remember my video names. I'm going link that in the description, but don't go watch it yet because I have some more important information to share adult chicks with you. okay? So another thing that I think is very important for new chicken keepers to know, and something I wish I knew when I got my first flock, is that baby chicks, from the time that they're little fluffy chicks until they become adult chickens, they will go through several like mini-molts. During that time they will look scraggly, they will look ragged, they will look busted, okay? So if you see, like you know, a little patch at the base of the tail, a few missing feathers around the neck, I don't want you to immediately assume: oh my gosh, they're getting picked on, they're getting bullied.

Baby Chicks Don't Have Enrichment

That does happen. It can happen. That usually happens because baby chicks don't have enough space or they don't have enough enrichment within their space. You will see that behavior happening.

But if you're not seeing pecking and bullying going on and you don't see any mites or lice or anything like that, it's very likely that they're just going through that really awkward juvenile stage where they just look like. You know, little hairy Velociraptors, okay, and that is totally normal. and I was like Oh my gosh, I've got feather eaters. This is going to be a problem for you know the lifetime of this vlog. You know. Here I had somebody in my life that was like: "Look, don't, don't worry, you know, chill out, okay, and so I did okay.". So I actually think that this is the most important thing I wish I had known from the beginning. I know it now.

So you guys, Rooster, might see this during this video. I have my sweet rooster, Philippe. He is old, uh, he has been chronically sick his whole life, and he's been having a little trouble lately. So I do have him separated from the flock right now. But he really like, he really wants to be with his flock. So I have him outside right now. But if you see him in the background and he's in his little run, I don't know, I'm not.

I'm not keeping him jailed. He's out here so he can get some fresh air and I'm trying to keep him healthy.

I Love This Chicken, Philippe

I don't know how much longer I have with him, but I just wanted to offer that explanation. So you know that I really love this, this chicken, Philippe. If you want to know more about him, I'll leave some videos about Philippe and his journey here on this earth in the description. You know, when I first chickens got chickens, I was confused. There was a ton of information out there. You know I was in like chicken groups.

Chicken Landia's Backyard Chickens 101

everybody was telling me different things. I would worry a lot, I would stress out a lot, and I really felt like. You know I had to, like, reinvent the wheel. I learned about all these things and I bought a whole bunch of stuff, and now I'm looking back at it. I really wish I would have understood that humankind has been keeping chickens for thousands of years, like Millennia, okay, a long time now. Of course, it wasn't always like this, like what you see in my chicken yard. I have a way that I do it. It's a chicken landy away, but there are many, many valid ways.

The one thing I didn't think of is that you know this should be the most natural thing in the world. for me. It's literally, it's in my DNA, it's in my heritage, it's in your heritage, and we should feel confident about it, because we're not reducing the wheel. We are doing something that many people before us have done, and many people after us will do. hopefully. I was really lucky, my mentor, when I had my first vlog, because I was nervous, I was anxious, and I didn't want to make any mistakes. and of course I did. But I had someone in my life who was a mentor to me, and this person had been a farmer their whole life.

They had grown up on a farm and I could just go to him and ask him questions, and he would always have an answer for me, and so that really made my experience so much better, and I really wish there was a way that I could offer that to everybody. And believe me, I get a lot of questions, and I just can't like people, just email me all the time, or they message me on social media, and I just I can't answer all of them like that's impossible. I would be only doing that and not putting out these videos and putting this information out there, which I think is more valuable in the long run. So I can't be your personal mentor, but what I can offer you is something very close. It is an online course. It's called chicken landia's backyard chickens (101), a chicken course for everyone. This is a great course for beginners or intermediate chicken owners.

In this course, you're going to learn how to easily decide how many chickens you can have in the space that you have. You will learn how to keep baby chicks healthy. naturally. You will learn how to have a user friendly loop that your chickens are going to love. You'll learn how to keep chicken safe from predators without having to harm wildlife and have healthy chickens without loading them with a whole bunch of unnecessary medications.

So here is how this course is almost like having your own personal mentor. As you take the course, you can ask questions and I see those questions, or my co-instructor will see those questions, and we try to answer them usually within 24 hours, which is way faster than I will ever get to any other question that someone randomly emails me.

If I get to those at all, I do prioritize the questions that come from my students, and you will have access to this course for as long as the course is on the internet. So if you want to make your chicken keeping experience more fun, more entertaining, stress free, okay, that's a big one. All you have to do is click the link that I've left here on the screen. It's going to take you to a page that gives you a little more information about the course, and you can purchase it through that page. So I hope to see you there and in the meantime, remember you're always welcome in chickenia. bye.

Conclusion

I did not know that it is super important to keep an eye on them in that first 24 hours. Baby chicks have about 48 hours after they hatch to get food and water if they don't eat and drink within that time frame. They can have something called starve out.