Spring time is chick time at the Moss Mountain Farm Garden Home. This time of year the hatchery and brooders are fully populated with baby birds getting ready to join the rest of the flocks on the farm.

So you may be asking yourself where one gets chicks if they don’t already have chickens. You can order them through a mail order hatchery, purchase chicks at a farm supply store or pick them up from a local hatchery.

Here are a few pointers to help you through the process.

Know the Breed

Before you start shopping do your research and get familiar with the different breeds. Much like dogs, every chicken breed has unique qualities. Leghorns are good egg layers, Wyandottes are calm and Orpingtons adapt nicely to confinement. You want to match your chicken to their environment and your needs.

Where to Get Your Chicks

Baby chicks are available through mail order, farm supply stores and local hatcheries. To ensure success get your chicks from a reputable hatchery. Check with your extension service for local sources. You can expect to pay around 2 to 4 dollars for day old chicks depending on the quantity, sex and breed.

Mail Ordering : You can order as early as January and schedule delivery for later in spring. Early ordering is a good idea if you have a specific breed in mind because the selection gets slim fast. I’ve ordered from Stromberg’s with good results. You can order all female, all male or a “straight run,” which is a mix. As you can imagine chicks are very hard to sex so expect a few males/females in the batch even if you specify one sex. Most often the minimum order is 25. This is the number of chicks needed to keep them warm enough to survive transit. There are a few places that will ship fewer.

Vaccines

Make sure your chicks are vaccinated for Marek’s disease. This is an optional vaccine, but worth having. Marek’s is a virus that is extremely common and easy to catch. The symptoms include paralysis, drooping wings, thinning and blindness. Besides being painful and often terminal, a flock may be contagious without every showing signs of the disease. To be effective it is important that chicks are vaccinated as soon after hatching as possible. It will add a small cost to the price of each bird, but it’s well worth it.

Be Ready Before Your Chicks Arrive

It’s important to have everything in place before you bring home your new babies. They’ll need to stay in a heated brooder until they are well feathered with bedding, water & feed.

Aylesbury ducks have an intriguing history, and they’ve been around for a long time. And at one time there were many of them. But now they’re considered a very rare breed. Earlier this year, Frank Reese, with the good shepherd poultry ranch, came to visit me at the farm to discuss the history and importance of preserving the heritage of these beautiful birds.

Allen Smith: Frank, I can’t believe how windy it is today. I’m so glad you’re here.

Frank Reese: Well, thank you.

Allen Smith: you know, the Aylesbury duck has been around for a long time, hasn’t it?

Frank Reese: Yes, it’s a very old breed. It’s so old, we don’t even know for sure their complete history. But it’s an old English breed of duck.

Allen Smith: You know, we have been fortunate here to be able to collect three genetic lines of that duck. I was stunned when I began to collect these birds, how few there are left in the country.

Frank Reese: Yeah, you probably have one of the bigger flocks that’s even in existence in North America. There’s just hardly anybody left breeding them, especially in any numbers. So the work you’re doing here is extremely important. And they’re not the only bird in trouble. There are many of our varieties of standard-bred poultry — the Jersey Giant, the Barred Rock, the Silver-laced Wyandotte, the old, original meat birds. And there are many, many other varieties of poultry that are in great danger.

Allen Smith: Now, you’ve raised poultry your entire life and know a lot about all the different species. But with the ducks, any advice as we move out of winter into spring?

Frank Reese: Well, you know, this time of year for ducks, they do quite well in cold weather and just getting ready for spring and that they have all of the water and feed and nutrition they need to lay good, healthy eggs. The majority of the time we get in trouble with a little duckling is because we let him get cold, and we let him get wet.

Little ducks, believe it or not, drown very easily. And so you do have to just watch them. You are their mother. They’re babies. They need to be watched. And you need to help keep them warm and dry and have good bedding and clean water.

Allen Smith: Well, my hope with this series of strains, these three that we have, that we’ll be able to hatch a lot of ducklings and really bring up the population of Aylesbury and be able to offer them to other farmers.

Frank Reese: Yeah, and hopefully you’ll also become the center of teaching, a place in which people can come and learn what an Aylesbury is about and why that duck needs to be preserved and be part of our future.

Allen Smith: Frank, so good to have you here. Thank you.

If there is one thing that people know about me, it’s that I love chickens! Buff Orpingtons, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Black New Jersey Giants, I couldn’t pick a favorite if I tried. It’s important to have safe and stable housing for our feathered friends and there are so many alternatives to the standard chicken coop. Let’s take a look.

Here is a custom chicken coop that I built. The design of the coop makes it a pleasure to look at while providing a great home for my friends.

You never know when your environment may change; here is a mobile chicken coop I have at the Garden Home Retreat that can go just about anywhere because it is built on a trailer.

Here is one of my favorite chicken coops, the Chicken Tractor. It weeds and fertilizes your garden at the same time while providing great housing for your chickens.

I saw this coop at my friend Jerusalem’s (JollyGoodeGal.com) house. Her husband made it from old doors and windows.

I hope these chicken coops inspire some great ideas for your own homes and gardens! For more information on unique chicken coops, visit my website at www.pallensmith.com.

The top dog at Moss Mountain Farm is not a dog at all but a rooster named Amos. Amos is a Buff Orpington you’ll find strutting around the front lawn with his entourage. I like to think of them as the welcoming committee.

Amos is one of my favorite characters at the farm. I would even go so far as to say he’s a pet, which will not come as a surprise to those who have raised chickens. Their plucky personalities can be very endearing. In fact, some folks treat their poultry with as much love and devotion as the family dog.

Thanks to products like chicken diapers birds can live indoors and special leashes allow Foghorn Leghorn to join his person on a stroll around the neighborhood. I even hear tell of chickens wearing sweaters and scarves to protect them from the cold.

Now, I adore the poultry at the farm, but I think we are all better off not being roommates. And Amos probably prefers life in the buff to wearing anything that would cover his beautiful feathers.

What about you? How do you pamper your chickens?

My fascination with unusual chickens started at a young age. When I was nine I entered a trio of Silkie bantams in a show at the Warren County Fair. Silkies are pretty fancy looking birds. They are covered in downy feathers with a head crest and feathers around their ankles and toes, as if they are wearing a fur coat, cap and boots.

Since then I’ve raised a variety of birds some that I’ve given names including Slim, a Modern Game bantam; Jackie and Elroy, a pair of Barred Plymouth Rock bantams; Mottled Cochin bantams and French Porcelains.

Because space is limited in my urban home garden I’ve found the smaller bantam breeds to be the ideal size. However, the roominess of the Garden Home Retreat has made it possible to select some large birds like the colossal black Jersey Giant. First developed in the 1870s, they are still the largest American breed. Roosters can weigh up to 13 pounds and hens as much as 10 pounds. The chicks that I have are only a few weeks old and they are already as big as crows.

The second type of chicken I’ve selected is a French variety called Houdan. Like the Silkies, it’s a flashy breed with a feathery head crest and muff around the neck. They also have 5 toes.

Some friends of mine have been kind enough to keep the chicks for me until I’m ready to move them to the Garden Home Retreat. The construction of their new house is underway and its going to be something special. After years of checking out all the amazing houses people provide for their chickens, I knew exactly what I wanted to build – a portable chicken tractor. It is designed to protect the chickens from predators while giving them free range to graze on fresh grass. I took an old trailer frame and had it straightened and strengthened by a local welder. Then I stopped by to talk to a talented local woodworker I know and sketched out a design on a napkin. He took the plan and constructed a house on top of the trailer. Once finished, it was stained in the same colors as the other outbuildings. A portable electric fence is strung around the area to protect the birds. As the birds graze in an area and need fresh pasture, the entire house can be moved and the fence repositioned.

Back View

Side View

Cut Away Interior View

If you want to try your hand at raising chickens, spring is a great time to purchase chicks. For the best success, I recommend that you find a local breeder. You can do this by checking out the publication The Poultry Press or your local cooperative extension. For poultry raising supplies, nothing beats Stromberg’s. I have been purchasing material from them since I entered my first competition with 3 white Silkie bantams.

I also recommend that you purchase a copy of A Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow. It is an excellent book that will help you learn how to raise chickens successfully, and before you know it you will be sharing chicken stories of your own!

Jersey Giant is the largest breed of chicken that I raise at the farm. The hens can reach up to 10 pounds and the roosters a whopping 13 pounds. In comparison with the Jersey Giant, the typical weight of a Leghorn is 4 ½ pounds for hens and 6 pounds for roosters. Their hefty size demands more space than other breeds, but they are well worth including in your home flock if you have the room.

Jersey Giants were developed in New Jersey between 1870 and 1890. The objective was to produce a chicken that could replace the turkey as America’s favorite roasting bird. It’s a dual-purpose breed, which means they are raised for both the meat and eggs. I raise black Jersey Giants, but white and blue are also colors recognized by the American Poultry Association.

As far as temperament goes, you’ll find them to be very mellow and easy to handle. Jersey Giants are adaptable to both confined spaces and free range. They produce a good amount of large, brown or cream colored eggs.

If you are planning to raise these chickens for meat, keep in mind that it takes longer for them to mature than other breeds. Plan on it take several months for a Jersey Giant to reach a big enough size for the pot or roaster.

Spring is the season of adorable out at the farm. This week the chicks get first prize for cuteness. They are about 4 days old and starting to show some sass. Jersey Giant, Buff Orpington, Dorking, Wyandotte and New Hampshire are the breeds we’ve hatched.

These pictures beg for captions don’t you think? Well, the folks in the office sure thought so and spent a good deal of time emailing choice chick words; some with visual aids. Check out their suggestions on our Chicken Chat Facebook page.