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Going to the Birds! continued

by Anita Gerber

South Dakota weather can vary greatly in those first weeks of April.  One day may be warm and gentle; the next may hold drizzling rain, temperatures in the 30’s or 40’s, even sleet and snow.  Keeping new chicks in a stable warm climate in those conditions is quite a challenge, and I found myself raising and lowering the heat lamps repeatedly as the chicks either clumped together (they can smother each other quickly if this happens) or fled the heat to the outside edges of the tank. I did have a horrible experience with one order of 260 chicks, in that I had made them very comfortable, heat-wise, but hadn’t covered the brooder with screen.  The first day went well, but I found over half of them dead the next morning.  I had a resident mink!  I mistakenly blamed the cats, put on a new screen door, and realized my mistake when I found one sole survivor the next morning.  I had been in business but two days and was already OUT of business!  A grim lesson learned.

The first days of June in South Dakota are usually wonderfully mild.  The new chicks came in and were immediately quite comfortable and life was good…for a while.  They flourished for about a month and then, suddenly, the various predators with offspring of their own came to visit and, it seemed, to teach their young the delights of killing and eating young chickens.  I raised the sides of the pen with more chicken wire, but there is little that can keep a raccoon out if he/she has focused on a target.  Day after day, I found wings, legs, and other various parts of my dead chickens lying all over the barn!  Then the weather turned.  The temperatures were no longer mild, but soared into the mid- to high nineties. Even with the large open doors, there was not enough air moving to keep the 6-week-old chickens comfortable.  I tried to obtain fans that would perhaps keep them from dying from having over-heated, but it seemed that none were actually big enough.  I only managed to save twenty-two out of over two hundred chicks.  Another hard lesson learned.

Having discovered some costly realities, I have decided to save money, stress, and heartache by simply bypassing those times of year that only seemed ideal for chicken production.  Since then, the chicks are ordered to arrive at mid-July, when they actually benefit from the heat.  It has led to selling the birds at a time of year when the focus has changed to my customers needing to fill their freezers for the winter. 

Another costly part of starting any enterprise is purchasing adequate and appropriate equipment to even start the chicks.  Most of the equipment is, of course, reusable.  Good heat lamps are a must, along with a supply of replacement bulbs. The lamp itself will cost about $8.00; the bulbs vary according to where they are purchased.  The cheapest place I found for bulbs was Running’s, so they have kept my business.

The little feeders for baby chicks are relatively inexpensive, but they are rapidly outgrown.  The larger feeders are not inexpensive at all, costing about $15 for one feeder that is only three feet long.  The main objective with these birds is to make eating as comfortable as possible, so it is a priority to provide them with adequate head-space.  The best solution I have discovered is to simply buy the pieces of plastic eave trough that come in ten-foot-long pieces.  Including the plastic ends that are available, a feeder of that size costs only about $9.  The advantages of using these substitutes are that they are not only easy to fill, move, and clean; they are also easily stored when the season is finished. 

A constant and adequate supply of water is another necessity for healthy chickens that will want to keep on eating.  I have used a variety of types of waterers, depending on the age of the chicks.  The little one-gallon sized ones are perfect for starting the birds, but will by no means be sufficient as they continue to grow.  Larger waterers are available in both plastic and metal. The metal ones are easily filled with a bucket, but seem to develop serious leaking issues even during the first season of use. The plastic ones are more expensive and are more easily filled with a hose than with a bucket, but their lifespan is much longer and, for some reason, the chickens themselves tend to prefer them.  If at all possible, I do try to avoid carrying any more buckets than necessary, so I also have acquired an ample supply of hoses, each of which is at least 75 feet long.  I have experimented with the automatic dog waterers that can be attached to a regular garden hose for a constant supply of water.  It worked very well indeed, and I am considering devising a series of them for the coming season.  They are available for about $16 each.

Feed for a large number of birds can be very costly if one chooses to use the bagged varieties.  One hundred birds may consume a five-gallon bucket full of feed twice a day.  The bagged feeds are usually about $9 per 50-pound bag, so I checked with our local grain elevator about a ration for chickens at the various stages of their development.  The manager was quite happy to research the available information for me.  I found the price varied from starter feed to grower to finisher, but it was much less expensive overall.  Storing bulk feed can be another issue, but I have an extremely elderly metal grain wagon whose tires are not only totally defunct, but are impossible to replace.  It seems that tires for rims like those aren’t available anymore.  That wagon doesn’t roll very well, but it easily stores two tons of chicken feed.  The very fact that it is raised above the ground (and is metal) helps to deter the rodents that seem drawn to chicken raising operations.

The main question everyone asks is, “Do you butcher all those birds yourself?” 

The answer to that is a resounding, “NO!” 

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