Tips on Raising Chickens – Part 1 – Choosing the Right Breed

Hello, I (Xanna) will be sharing some thoughts and suggestions on raising/keeping chickens.

First off, you have to consider the breed(s) you want to keep. This will be based very much off of why you are interested in keeping chickens and if you’ve had any previous experience.

Some birds require extra care – like silkies, crested birds, and ones with feathered legs. These birds are mostly just show birds, though, so you shouldn’t have to deal with them unless you are keeping birds just for show.

When we first got chickens 3 years ago, we chose Dominiques because they are very hardy, which makes them an excellent breed for beginners. They are neither egg-layers specifically, nor meat birds, but they actually do pretty well for both. Being hardy means it’s hard to kill them because you made a mistake. Also with the climate we live in (Northern IL), it gets pretty COLD in the winter. We did lose a few of these hardy birds a few years ago when it was well below zero for many days in a row, but for the most part, they do well.

When you start off, you have 3 options you can start with:

1. Order fertile eggs online (or get them from someone like ourselves that has egg-laying hens) and incubate the eggs yourself. This is probably the most “dangerous” of the options because there are MANY things that could go wrong.
2. Mail order chicks from a hatchery or pick them up from a local store (We got our birds originally this way – we ordered them online, however, the 2nd year we did so, when we picked them up at the post office – they call you around 5am & you have to pick them up as soon as possible – there was a HUGE bleach smell & over half the birds died. We assume that probably they were poisoned because of the heavy cleaning chemicals the P.O. used while they were waiting for us to pick them up.) Farm & Fleet carries baby chicks, but not all the breeds, which is why we bought ours online, because we wanted the specific breed we chose. This is the most popular way to start a flock.
3. Acquire a flock of laying hens from someone you know or sometimes a hatchery will sell Juvenile hens. This is by far the most expensive, because whomever you are buying from has already taken all the risk & expense of feeding the birds up until they sell them. (Note: Often your local extension office will have free baby chicks in the Spring – classrooms hatch chicks & then give them away – we got some this way last year & that’s why we now have Easter Egg layers as well as our Dominques. It’s fun to have green eggs!) =)

More to come soon in Part 2! =)