Raising Chickens on our Homestead | Year 1
Hello Everyone and Welcome to our Blog where we share all our Adventures on our Small Homestead in Alberta Canada. We recently decided to start raising chickens as we figured it would be a great family adventure and we would be able to now provide our family with something other than fruits and vegetables from our garden. Before we were able to get our baby chicks we had to find a coop for them. Now you can get just a tiny coop but we knew in the long run that we wanted anywhere from 10-20 Hens so we needed something sufficient in size and also insulated for our long cold northern winters. The price of a larger coop was anywhere from $3000-$7000 Canadian depending on what features you were looking for. Well we have harsh winters so we wanted insulated but also able to vent for humidity, we wanted windows, at least 6 nesting boxes, an automatic door and well you get the point so we priced it out and decided to build our own. Below you can click through and watch a few videos on our coop build. Well I say our coop build but my husband did it all and he did a wonderful job. Or scroll past and read on for the arrival of our baby chicks.
In March of 2023 we received our first day old baby chicks from a local hatchery and we were thrilled. How cute and exciting to have these beautiful baby creature right before Easter; Our little girls were beyond ecstatic. They were all Dual Purpose Heritage Breeds with the intent to cull or as we like to call it "Rooster Camp" any roosters that we may end up with for eating purposes. Heritage breeds are also lovely birds and come in many breeds and sizes and are also great layers. We ended up with 2 Blue Andalusian (White Layers), 2 Barred Rock (Medium Brown Layers), 3 Buff Orphington (Light brown/Ivory Layer), 4 Black Copper Maran (Chocolate Brown Layer), 6 Americana Chickens (Blue/Green Layers)! So as you can tell we will have quite the variety of heritage breed chickens which mean we have a variety of egg colors as well.
When our chicks where small we made a small brooder out of a plastic tub and made a mesh cover for it so our cats and dog could not access the chicks. We placed small rocks in the water dish so the chicks would not drown or fall asleep in the water dish. We placed pee pads on the bottom and changed a few times a day for the first few days un until we were no longer worried about them eating shavings. We purchased a K&H Thermo Chicken brooder from our local Peavy Mart which worked great.
The only issue we had with our baby chicks were that a few ended up with Pasty Butt which we were able to treat quickly and resolve the issue and all chicks lived and were healthy. After a couple weeks we they outgrew their tub and needed more space but were not quite ready for the elements of outside in Alberta and well we needed to finish the coop build and run. So we had a large shipping crate we put in our garage and made a larger space for them and it worked until 6 weeks when they graduated to outside and their permeant home. Click the video below and about half way thru we show our larger shipping crate brooder.
We also have other videos on our Youtube channel showing our journey thru summer of 2023 and into the fall when we harvest our Roosters. We did try to give away but that can be difficult unless you have a rare breed. We started with 17 chickens and we now have 11 as we kept a Black Copper Maran rooster and Ameracauna for breeding in spring of 2024 along with 9 Hens. So our first year went really well and we purchased an incubator for the spring of 2024 and can't wait to start the process all over again.
- Alberta Adventurer Family
