We got 200 day-old pullet chicks today. Fall’s a good time to brood chicks if you’re not in a particularly hard climate. The weather gets cooler as the chicks get bigger and more cold-tolerant, which works really well. These chicks will start laying before Easter.
Lots of people have had great experiences with fall brooding after reading my book, Success With Baby Chicks, which goes into year-round brooding in great detail.
I Publish Books! Norton Creek Press
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Curious what breed of chicks did you get and what is the bedding used in the picture.
Don
Don,
They’re California Whites from Privett Hatchery in Portales, NM. California Whites are a cross between a commercial White Leghorn and a California Gray (an unusual breed that most people have never heard of, developed by Prof. James Dryden here in the Corvallis area, the first person to prove that you can increase egg production by selective breeding — which is harder than it looks). They’re a little bigger and a little less panicky than a standard commercial Leghorn.
The bedding is a thin layer of new wood shavings on top of a deeper layer of old ones.