Moving Day for the Littles

The chicks are now fully feathered out and are starting to outgrow their indoor living arrangements.  I took the heat lamp off of them a couple of weeks ago to give them some time to adjust to keeping themselves warm.  Once they go outside, they will no longer have the luxury of a temperature controlled environment so I wanted to make sure they were ready to survive the still chilly nights.

I keep the young chickens in one of my smaller chicken tractors that has a box attached to the run.  The box has some roosting bars up inside and a layer of wood shavings in the bottom for litter.  The run also has a place that they can perch when they get big enough to fly that high.  The whole run is made up of chicken wire attached to a frame.  Even the bottom has chicken wire to keep predators from digging under the frame.  I had a fox problem last year and lost some chicks.  Modifying the bottom of the run solved the problem and I no longer worry about losing chicks when I keep them in this set up.

Here the chicks will continue to grow until they are about the same size as the adult chickens.  Once they are big enough to fend for themselves they will be integrated into my laying flock if they are hens or butchered for the freezer if they are roosters.  This should happen when they are around five months old.  I plan on hatching out a second round of chicks later this year, but will have to time it so that this growing pen will be available for them when they are old enough to go out.  I probably won't set any new eggs in the incubator until June.