Welcoming chickens to our homestead

My husband and I have been discussing chickens over the last year. We always said we would get them right when we moved.. but responsibilities elsewhere just kept me away from it. I wanted to make sure we had the best coop, the safest protections in place.. all before we brought our fluffies home. I did do a lot of research and knew exactly what style coop I wanted, which of course we were going to build all by ourselves <insert eye roll>.

Well just like nothing goes as planned.. this situation was no exception. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and my husband says, “it’s chick days at Tractor Supply Store”. We.. just like everyone went to go ’look’. Out front of the store I saw this coop- and immediately fell in love! It was the style I was looking for in a starter coop, and it gave us a great opportunity to add a large run. And that folks, is all it took! We headed right inside to buy our coop and pick out our baby chicks!

All the supplies!

The wonderful TSC associate was super nice and happily loaded our cart with tons of chick necessities. I immediately got that 7 months pregnant feeling of looking at all the stuff like, ‘do we really think we can keep these little things alive?!’ She loaded us up with:

  • A large water dish
  • Large feeder dish
  • Heat lamp
  • Bulbs for heat lamp
  • Shavings
  • Probiotics to add into their water
  • Feed
  • A large barrel
  • Expensive coop (already assembled!)

Time to get our babies!

Then, we headed back for our new babies. We decided to get 6 of them before even looking up how many we were allowed to have where we live. I was stressed with 3 kids with us who were way too excited- so much that it compelled them to start climbing the pallets of dog food bags (Seriously- who raised these kids). I was asked a question I wasn’t prepared for- “which ones would you like?” Uhhhhhh the happiest ones?! I rushed to a photo on my phone that my friend sent me that talked about a couple of breeds and their qualities and luckily one of the friendly, high egg producing breeds was what they had! “Alright- I’ll take 6 of your Rhode Island Reds!”

Chicken math

Fast forward to getting everything home, we realized there was a piece of the coop that was set aside when we were loading it up- so we needed to head back. Got there.. picked up the piece.. walked inside.. and bought 4 more chicks! haha. We found out for our area and our house, we can have up to 12. So why not 10! The 4 added are Asian Black Pullets. They are just all so cute together. So we were quickly a victim of chicken math and I am sure it wont be the last time, haha.

We are so happy to document our chicken journey on our blog! There will definitely be more posts about our learnings, I sure hope it inspires as well as educates another family to jump into the world of chicken homesteading!

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Predator Proofing Our First Chicken Run
Quick (DIY) Crate Chicken Brooder