Vitamin C and D Supplementation

Peeps at just a couple days old.

For the past few years, my hubby and I have been talking about turning our home and it’s ¾ acre lot into a homestead. We have read books and articles and watched YouTube videos by people who turned their 1 acre or less homes in the suburbs into homesteads. We made plans and dreams about what our home could look like as a homestead. With everything going on in the world right now, we decided to go from dreams to putting a plan into action. A few weeks ago, we purchased 6 chicks.

Chicks in the chicken tractor.

Yes, we have chickens! We have spent the past 4 weeks designing and building a chicken coop and run. We built a small chicken tractor for the birds to be in before transitioning them to the permanent coop. There have been many start up challenges to raising these chicks, but it is worth it to have them on our property. They will serve several purposes from pest control to providing fertilizer for the gardens to fresh eggs.

My granddaughter holding one of the chicks.

The first thing we researched was what type of chickens we wanted. After talking to several friends of ours who have chickens and researching the breeds our local Tractor Supply had, we chose Ameraucana and Isa Browns. The Ameraucana is an American breed of domestic chicken that was developed in the 1970’s. They were bred to retain the blue-egg gene and average about 200 eggs per year. They are generally very docile and calm. They are cold hardy. Their average life span is 6 to 10 years. The other breed we chose was the Isa Brown. They were bred to be prolific egg layers and can lay 300+ eggs per year. They tend to be sweet and friendly chickens that enjoy being around their human family and because of that, they are recommended as a good starter chicken.  Their life span is only 3-5 years. They are also a cold hardy breed. This was an important quality because of our location.

A chick practicing perching on our hands.

With this information, we headed off to our local Tractor Supply and purchased 3 of each breed. We found out quickly that newly hatched chicks are very frail as we lost 3 within the first 36 hours. We think it was the stress of being mailed to the store, and then being transported to our home.  The young man at the store told us they literally had just received a shipment in the mail that morning. Fortunately, we called and were able to get those three replaced.

We kept the chicks in a brood box with a heat lamp in a corner of my son’s room, because the cats were very curious about these little creatures. It was amazing to watch them grow from little peeps to miniature chickens in just 4 weeks. They quickly outgrew the brood box. My husband built a chicken tractor out of 2 old repurposed dog kennels we had in the garage and an old set of wheels that we think came off an old grill. (I will show you the build in a future blog) The chicks love it, because they can exercise their wings and they are learning to peck the ground for bugs and worms.

My granddaughter moving the chicken tractor.

The next decisions we had to make were where we were going to locate the chicken coop and what was it going to look like.  Our research showed that you would need 2 to 3 square feet per chicken in the coop. Nesting boxes would need to be 12 to 14 inches and could be made from literally anything that could keep the eggs dry and up off the ground. In videos and articles, we learned that some people have used 5-gallon buckets, milk crates, and wooden boxes attached to the sides of the coop. Some of the plans were very elaborate, while others were simply 2 x 4’s and chicken wire. We took things we liked from different plans and built our own version.

My husband building the chicken coop.

We will be using the deep litter method for the coop. We are working on building a rainwater catch system that will provide the chickens with fresh water and a feed system that will keep the maintenance of the chickens to a minimum.

Watching the chicks grow and develop personalities has been a highlight of these past few weeks. We can’t wait for the first eggs from our chickens and we are looking forward to having them help keep the pests out of our garden this summer. 

My new co-worker.

 
Peace,
Tammy Deatelhauser, LMT BCTMB
Young Living Member 1521964

FDA Disclosure

I am a licensed massage therapist with training in culinary herbalism. I am not a doctor. Posts in this blog are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice. Also, these thoughts and opinions do not represent Young Living. Young Living products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please consult your physician before making any changes. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.