Raising Chickens Series: Preparing the brooder..picking up the baby birds!

folks the video you're about to watch is part of a series here working with Meyer hatchery and Stoney Ridge farmer so we're going to be working together to show you what to expect when raising your birds now you could learn a whole lot from this if you already have birds and you can learn a whole lot from this if this is your first time ordering Birds you're thinking about having some egg layers for your backyard or some meat Birds for your family's food this is the channel to watch be sure and pound that like button subscribe to the channel down there and click the little bell it will notify you when I post a new video and you can follow this series on raising chickens alright hey folks is Josh stony Ridge former welcome to the farm blog today today we're waiting on a phone call a phone call from the post office because we've got 50 Birds coming in from my er hatchery so I'm gonna show you what we do to get prepared for the birds that are coming in from my er hatchery today and then we'll go to the post office together and check them out alright let's get started now before we get our Birds there are a few things that we need to do to prepare for our Birds we need to get our brooder set up and we need to be able to keep these birds between 95 and 100 degrees for at least the first few days okay baby chicks aren't able to regulate their own temperature for a few days or even a few weeks after birth so we've got to keep them in a nice warm place now it's June the 15th or so right now so it's already gonna be like 85 degrees outside so we've got heat lamps we've got all kinds of good stuff but we may not even need those who may just be able to get our birds out into the Sun now you don't want to just sit them out in the Sun and bake them you want to have a place where they can find shade they can find warmth they can find cool okay so let's show you the things that we got from our hatchery right here I want to let you guys know that I'm not getting paid by my or hatchery to do this video they're a company that I believe in the health of their birds has always been great for me so I contacted them and we're gonna work in partnership to show you guys what you need to do to prepare for your birds and we'll walk you through this whole process in a video series so in order to get a good start with your birds you need to have a brooder area set up now there are several different ways you can do a brooder area Meyer hatchery has sent us some of this awesome synthetic straw matting and you can use that or you can use good old shavings right here now you can make a brood area this is a roll of cardboard that Meyer hatchery provides and you can basically just set a spot out in your garage or your barn or your carport and keep the birds confined into this little space until they're big enough to take outside now let's go over here and we'll show you our brood box and then we'll show you where we're going to put them when they go outside and we're going to use the shavings to get our brood box ready okay there are a few other things that you need and a few things that you might not need but we got here nice awesome you ready what so let's get in this box of stuff from meyer hatchery so you're gonna need a water err okay this is a heavy heavy duty water er that meyer hatchery sent us and that will help with our baby birds now you don't want this much space for your baby birds to get into and accidentally drowned because there used to be in a wet egg they want to be in a wet spot so they'll tend to get in this and what I do is I just put a little gravel down in there from my driveway or you can go get little gravels little bag of gravels from Lowe's or wherever and drop them in there that keeps them from drowning and it also keeps the water a little bit cleaner okay next thing they sent us were two feeders now these two feeders will be just fine for the amount of birds that we have the only concern with a feeder is that they can rake feed out and we'll see how these little guys do over time I'm not sure exactly what that little guy right there is I think it's so that they can't jump up on the feeder and poop in the feed pretty cool little design now Meyer hatchery also sent us this thermometer that we can put down inside of our brooder to make sure that we're the right temperature and they sent us to things that I've never used before this is a vital pack for electrolytes and this is called grow gel plus so when you first get this grow gel you're supposed to mix it in was it's a 100 milliliters of water and it's a food supplement for your birds to give them a kickstart when they first arrive so the stress of travel and everything with these birds is going to be a little bit high so you're giving them some good hydration for their first little bit of water so we mix this in 100 cc's of water and give them to the birds the next thing I'm going to show you is an essential tool for raising your baby chicks okay so you're gonna have to have a brooder lamp just like this so this is the brooder lamp from my er hatchery it is a reflective it's from little giant reflective brooder lamp and they sent me a clear bulb now you can get the clear bulbs or you can get the red bulbs it's a 250 watt bulb now you need to make sure that your birds are nice warm if they're crowding around the lamp that means they're too cold if they're going away from the lamp and trying to avoid it that means they're too hot and you might need to raise your lamp up slowly but surely as we raise our Birds we'll be bringing our lamp further and further and further away from the birds as they acclimate to keeping their own body temperature regulated by themselves they also sent me something really pretty a scoop and we've got ten pounds of organic feed just to get us started too so let's go over here and I'll show you the brooder and I'll show you where we're going to move the chicks after they're done with the brooder it'd probably be about two weeks after they're in the bruders we'll move them outside to our mobile coop cool and we're gonna have to build another mobile coop too so be sure you're subscribed so you can watch us build that mobile coop oh and I forgot to show you one more thing this is Meijer hatcheries organic chick starter and that's what we're gonna get our Birds started on this will probably last for 50 Birds I'm gonna say it'll at least last maybe four or five days my guys here is our brooder setup and we basically just use one of these big ol county line totes and this will be enough to handle the 50 Birds probably for a week or so and then we'll have to get two of these totes now here's our thermometer if we need our thermometer we'll have it in here we'll go ahead and unwrap it this is our feeder and we filled it about half way full of food we don't want to overwhelm them and this is our water and we put our mixture in the waterer and we put our rocks in there so that we don't have any birds to get in the water and drown we want to make sure that we keep clean shavings in here okay it'll look very nice and the birds will do very good now folks you need to really give this some thought do a good job with your brooder do a good job with your birds take some pride take some time and do good and ensure that your birds will stay healthy and happy poor preparation not thinking things through and just throw in a bunch of birds in there is not gonna work you need to keep them clean you need to keep them dry you need to keep them healthy you need to keep an eye on them we'll go over a few health tips and stuff like that in future videos as things progress with our Birds let's take you over here and we'll show you the final destination for the birds it's out in my yard and I've got some ducks in it right now pretty cool this is a mobile cooped that we move our birds around every day and I'll show you right now we've got some duckies in here and we just basically have been feeding the ducks and moving them about four days out here just on the lawn okay and that's how we'll do these birds here this setup is basically has a rope on it on this end you lift up and on the back end here we have some snow skis and you can see this is the little paddock the little square that they were on last and if you look there's another square there's another square now you might be wondering is this gonna tear my yard up is this gonna look like crap no it's not gonna look like crap in about two weeks wherever the birds were is where your grass is just gonna flourish so as we move these meat birds through here they'll basically fertilize and put biomass back into my yard into my soil and save me on fertilizer so now we just wait for a phone call from the post office and we'll get our birds in and we'll introduce them to the brooder so stay tuned so folks here was on one day delay in shipping so we've got to get to the post office right away it's about 6:30 in the morning and the post office folks have agreed to let us go early and pick up the baby birds so let's go to the post office I'm excited to see I'm gonna hope everybody's doing okay they were hatched on Monday and today is Thursday morning so we've got to get them in the brooder got to give them some food and water pretty quick they're probably a little bit dehydrated and hungry guys just so you know the folks at the post office are cool with us doing a little bit of filming in there when we open the door the post office you're gonna hear the baby versus cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap it's really really cool so let's get on to the post office we're only about two minutes away I live in a very very rural area and folks are just nice it's just a wonderful place to live live in North Carolina here all right guys this is a box of 50 baby birds and I'll get you a little close up here in the post office looks like all the birds were doing great we're gonna put them in the back of the van here and we'll go introduce them to the brooder now the brooder box is going to be a little bit crowded at first but we'll disperse them into two brooder boxes eventually but we want them to be crowded a little bit at first so they stay warm and healthy cool got a load of beepers on here can you imagine how annoying that would be if you're working for the post office okay area are at the breeder and basically I'm just gonna set them on the edge of the brooder and open them up this is so cute guys you get the camera oh yeah so all the birds look wonderful and healthy and they're about ready to go into the blue box very very cute look at this guy he's a big one he's a big boy so we'll just set him down into our brooder box and we've already got it nice and warm [Music] well guys you can see the birds are eating and drinking and doing great everybody survived the trip everybody did well now while they're eating and drinking you know what's next they're gonna be pooping so we got to keep a close eye and keep our brooder nice and clean we'll be introducing the chicks to a second brooder once they get a little bit bigger probably after four or five days we'll split them up a little bit and then eventually we'll take them to the mobile coop outside so thanks a lot guys for watching the channel today be sure and pound that like button and be sure and use our specialized link down there to get to my err hatchery okay that's a great way you can show your appreciation for this video subscribe to the channel click the little bell icon down there now notify when we post a new video and you'll get to see a lot more stuff like this so thanks a lot guys be sure and use my link to my our hatchery and we'll see you next time on Stoney Ridge farm all right Denis Leary [Music]