Success With Baby Chicks

A Complete Guide to Hatchery Selection, Mail-Order Chicks, Day-Old Chick Care, Brooding, Brooder Plans, Feeding, and Housing

by Robert Plamondon

Did you know that most dangerous time for a baby chick is the few days of life? Raising day-old chicks can be a delightful experience if all goes well, or a heartbreaking one if things go poorly. Baby chicks are totally dependent on you for all the necessities of life, and you don't want to let them down. You need to be prepared. There's no question that it can be done: lots of people raise day-old chicks with perfect success, time after time, and are rewarded by a happy experience that we all long for. What's their secret? The secret is experience, and until recently it's been hard to come by. Learning the ropes the hard way is slow, heartbreaking, and hard on the chickens. Until recently, learning from books hasn't been much better. One popular book on chickens devotes only 19 pages to baby chicks. Can the most crucial period of life be covered in 19 pages? Not very well! In Success With Baby Chicks, I cover everything you need to know about raising chicks, starting with choosing a hatchery and breed and ending when the chicks no longer need extra heat. I place an emphasis on clear, upbeat, practical advice that you will start using immediately. You will see results from the very first day. The book includes many "Lost Secrets of the Poultry Masters": techniques that were once used by millions of American farmers, but were forgotten after the transition to large-scale farming fifty years ago.

I devote entire chapters to subjects that are normally dismissed in a paragraph or two, such as litter or waterers. Overhead infrared heat-lamp brooding has a chapter to itself. Cold-weather brooding is discussed in detail. (Did you know that you can successfully raise chicks in the depth of winter in uninsulated brooder houses? You will find out how when you read my book.) Waterers are given special attention. (Did you know that day-old chicks learn to drink faster if you you glass-jar waterers? The glint of the glass looks like water to them, and attracts them from a distance.)

I cover these details because, with baby chicks, details are important. The issue isn't that ignorance makes you less efficient, but that the baby chicks suffer. Read my book and this will never happen to you again.

My book is a real bargain. A good hen will give you at least $50 worth of eggs, even if you only value them at supermarket prices. So my $15.95 books saves the life of only one pullet chick, it has repaid itself three times over. And you will do far better than this, time after time, year after year.

By now, you may be ready to skip the rest of the sales pitch and order now.

My Early Baby Chick Troubles

Like many people, I used to have a good baby-chick experience one time and a bad one the next. There didn't seem to be any pattern to it. It was very frustrating, and it made me shy away from raising as many chicks as I wanted. I had gone into free-range egg production almost by accident, and I was never going to get anywhere unless brooding chicks went from a dreaded chore to a high point of the year.

Baby chicks are such a joy when things go well, but never knowing whether your baby chicks are going to live or die casts a pall of uncertainty and gloom over any poultry operation. No one can enjoy poultrykeeping if their flocks suffer from high mortality. And I don't even want to think about the effect it has on kids, who go into a poultry project brimming with optimism. How can this be avoided?

How I Turned Things Around

I had the good luck to meet a retired lady who had raised 30,000 chicks a year for many years, and insisted that raising chicks can be done with almost perfect success on any scale. She claimed she lost 1% of the chicks during the first week (from shipping-related stress), and the rest all survived to maturity. Bold claims, but she wasn't the only one to report such results!

You will benefit from my research. I have the good fortune to live near Oregon State University, which has hundreds of poultry books and magazines in its library, dating back to before 1900. I flipped through all of them, read most of them, and learned all kinds of things that used to be well known, but are now forgotten. Small farms and small flocks used to be the norm, and agricultural research then as now focused on the mainstream. This means that the literature of 50-100 years ago is filled with tested, proven, practical small-farm poultry techniques. Our grandparents' generation knew a lot about chickens. First I read about their techniques, then I tried them. Then I read some more. A lot of concepts didn't sink in all at once, because the information was scattered, and sometimes really crucial ideas were mentioned only in passing. But I kept at it.

My results with baby chicks kept getting better and better, and yours will, too. It wasn't that I had been doing just one or two things wrong with my initial batches of chicks. I had been doing dozens of things wrong! My initial reading of "modern" poultry books hadn't prepared me. And not only did I lack knowledge about techniques -- I didn't know any of the warning signs of trouble. Things would get really bad before I knew that anything was wrong at all.

How Well Does it Work?

Here's an example: I bought 150 pullet chicks in May. When I moved them out of the brooder house on July 2, I had 154 live pullets! Negative mortality! It's not really a miracle (hatcheries add extra chicks to cover losses in shipping), but "negative mortality" is pretty good by anybody's standard. And when you buy my book and put my techniques to work, these results will become typical for you, too.

Example: Build a 200-Chick Brooder in Two Hours for $20

Not only do these techniques work better, they can save you money. In Chapters 7 and 8, I tell you how to build an insulated electric brooder in two hours for about $20, which uses only about one-third the amount of electricity as overhead heat lamps, and does a better job besides. It's an easy construction project that won't give you any trouble. It and uses infrared heat lamps or reflector floodlight bulbs. Many people have told me that this information alone is worth the price of the book.

You Can Have The Same Success

None of these techniques are very complicated. I explain them fully in Success With Baby Chicks. My goal is to give you the same kind of results and understanding in just one book that took me hundreds of books and more than five years to achieve.

My goal doesn't include getting you to buy lots of expensive equipment. Being successful with baby chicks depends on your understanding of the chicks and their needs. The actual equipment and housing requirements are quite basic, and are much the same whether you are brooding ten chicks or a thousand.

You can't benefit from its information until you read it, so get the book right now!

About My Farm

I have a flock of 600 free-range laying hens, and my wife Karen Black raises about 2,000 pastured broilers per year. Our enjoyment of farming and the financial success of our farm depend on raising large numbers of chicks successfully.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Brooding Quick-Start
Chapter 3. Breed and Hatchery Selection
Chapter 4. Chooosing Profitable Breeds
Chapter 5. Brooding Basics
Chapter 6. Overhead Heat Lamp Brooders
Chapter 7. Insulated Heat Lamp Brooders
Chapter 8. More About Insulated Heat Lamp Brooders
Chapter 9. Battery Brooders
Chapter 10. Other Brooders
Chapter 11. Feeding
Chapter 12. Waterers
Chapter 13. Litter
Chapter 14. Brooder Houses
Chapter 15. Health Problems and Predators
Chapter 16. Useful Tables
Chapter 17. Recommended Reading
Chapter 18. For More Information

Read the Sample Chapters!

Chapter 2. Brooding Quick-Start
 

A Testimonial

Thanks for your help. The book is an excellent resource.

Ron Theusch
Alden, MN
 

Ordering Success With Baby Chicks

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