Raising your own food..So what's next? Helpful tips for your new baby birds!!

hey folks it's Josh Turner it's farmer welcome to another video on raising chickens in conjunction with Myer hatchery and Stoney Ridge farmer be sure and click that like button subscribe to the channel if you want to see more chicken videos or more videos here on the farm and click the little bell down there and I'll notify you when I post a new video there'll be a special link to Myer hatchery down below and we're going to talk about our birds today and we're one week out so we just received our baby chicks one week ago and we're going to go through it and we'll talk about it it involves a lot of poop so we got the Cornish cross chickens and basically they're just little eating and pooping and drinking machines we got 50 chicks we're getting to the point where we're going to have to move them to our outside mobile coop we'll take you and show you that and this is our coop for our laying hens once again be sure and subscribe because we'll have a lot of great chicken advice for you we'll have a lot of stuff to do with the hatchery and we'll learn a whole lot together so let's go and we'll check out the baby chicks and we'll show you the poop disaster I've been cleaning the brooder every day it doesn't matter every six hours probably wouldn't matter these birds are eating and pooping so let's go up and talk about them while we're on our way up to the chickens this is our outside coop and our outside run and this is our garden right here everything here on the farm is kind of symbiotic meaning that everything works on itself so we've been here on the farm about three years now and we're slowly but surely turning that clay hard dirt into a wonderful garden to feed our family let's get up here we've got ducks in the mobile coop will show you those guys and we'll get up here and we'll show you the baby chicks so right now we've got the baby ducks in here and the Ducks are just chilling out they're cold enough now where they can eat grass and they can eat stuff other than just the old chicken food here so Lord the duck food the high protein chick starter so they're doing really good and we're actually going to put these guys out on the pond with the adult ducks later today and we'll be moving our baby chicks in probably today or tomorrow you can see where I put farm vlog number seven that's like my tenth video I did on this thing we did it last year we built this thing so in a future chicken blog we'll go into detail about this chicken tractor and we'll also build one together we'll show you a simple way I'm going to try to build one out of PVC so that it's really light the but this one is it's too heavy to move and the birds like to get caught up in the back of it so any of you guys have any ideas post it in the comment section if you've ever raised ducks or if you're considering raising ducks let me tell you something ducks are messy but enough about them ducks let's get in here and check on the chickens so this is our brooder and it's been really hot outside so I've had to have a fan on there are 50 baby chicks in here and they are about a week and a half old so you can see the size of these birds when I got them let's catch one they're pretty docile little birds so you can see the size of them probably about a fistful of bird I've got a pretty good hand here and they'll be ready for harvest sometime in the next five weeks you can see they just make a disaster of everything they fill their feeder up they get on top and they poop they make a mess here I have fed this whole feeder full of food and they basically just kick shavings into it and this is what you need to expect so if you're raising these Cornish cross birds this is what you need to expect guys I'm gonna fill this feeder up and you're gonna see what kind of appetite these birds have it's just a voracious appetite and these are Cornish cross meat birds now we're raising these Cornish cross birds this spring and in the fall we're gonna go ahead and get some Ranger birds so we're gonna show you how we raise the Rangers it's going to be a whole different set up I believe but I'll show you how voracious the appetite of these Cornish cross birds are these birds will dress out at about know seven eight pounds in about six or eight weeks so a lot of bird a lot of food a lot of consumption and they grow really really fast now at some point in the life of these birds we'll have to go 12 hours on twelve hours off on feeding because they can eat so much they'll get so big that they can have heart attacks it's pretty crazy it's just a hybrid bird it's not a GMO bird it's not a bird that's full of antibiotics and crazy steroids it's just a hybrid bird and it grows really fast so before we get talking about feeding the chickens and the poop and all that stuff and all the cleanup that's involved I want to talk to you a little bit about what you need to do so with the chicks comes this little handbook or a little guide to washing your hands guys chickens are cute they're sweet they're lovable they're full of Salmonella it's naturally occurring in their gut and it will make you sick be sure you're not caressing these chickens by your face and be sure you're washing your hands and taking care of yourself Salmonella will make your sick guys be sure if you have children to make them understand that they'll get really really sick if they pet these birds and they eat something these birds have poop on them bottom line they have poop on them they will have poop on them from the time that you get them until the time that they're gone now before we go pouring through it in here we need to think about cleaning the coop okay so the coop is full of poop the coop is full of poop and we got to put some of your shavings in there and we don't need to clean out the entire brooder every day to put new shavings in let me show you what we do so we remove our feeder remove our feeder or feeders and this one came from Meyer hatchery it's got a cool little setup on it the birds camp let's sit on it so they don't put poop all over the feeder like that one pretty cool you can see how clean this one is and remove our feeder and we remove our waterer now simply enough guys you see the chickens pecking through all the manure and all the shavings what we want to do here is just put a little coat of shavings in here now the birds get a little testy it's okay it's not gonna hurt put a nice pile right in the center just like that and then take and spread out your little pile and give them a fresh bed savings start off we need to add a little bit more in here as you spread the shavings your birds will just move around a little bit and the shavings are great for the birds it's not gonna hurt them one bit just sprinkle em right on top of them now that we've got our shavings all spread out we'll take our water and I alternate sides so if my water is on the right side I put it on the left every day I alternate sides and that way I don't have one big wet spot in the coop I have a whole big wet spot I keep calling it the coop but in the brooder now if you're shaving surface is a bit uneven be sure and put the spouts downhill okay so in other words if it's cocked over to the side be sure that the spouts where the water comes out is on the low side now let's talk about feeding your birds when we first ordered our we ordered a 10-pound bag of organic chick starter now we basically just go to our local farm store and pick up some feed for our birds there are several schools of thought on how much protein to give these birds I'm just feeding the standard twenty percent protein and the birds are doing fine you can feed up to 24 percent but the more protein you feed them the faster they'll grow the more meat they'll produce but I guess I'm kind of old school and I just want to give the birds to 20 percent protein and basically we'll fill our feeder just like this we'll pour a little bit in we'll shake it back in there we'll pour a little more in shake it back in there a little more and this is a 1 gallon scoop right here and it fits perfectly into this little feeder now watch these little birds as I set this feed down in here they go nuts birdies birdies back there's another one there's another one it's pretty amazing to me the appetite of these birds they just go right for it every bird in here is eaten and if it's not eaten it's looking to eat so folks thanks a lot for watching the video today I wanted to show you what it was like one week after we got our Birds they're growing really really fast they're probably three times the size they were when we got them they were only like this big we're gonna get them out to the mobile coop probably later today or tomorrow we're gonna take our little ducks out and put them on the pond with the adult ducks and just keep an eye on our birds now it gets really really hot this time of year so we've got a fan set up right here and if you want any ideas on how to set up a fan right there's one it's just basically a stand fan and we just leaned it over into the coop and let it blow on them if it's over 100 degrees in this garage or in this shop out here we got to keep them cool ok you're keeping the birds inside your house be sure you don't let them overheat if those birds are panting like that that means they're overheated and they need to be cooled off so you got that many birds you really got to take care of them we ordered 50 Birds and so far we've only had one loss which is a very very good percentage last time I went to my regular farm store I lost 40% of my Birds that tells you something about my er hatchery and that tells you about Orem from a hatchery so guys if you want to go to Meyer hatchery click the little link down below again this video series is in partnership with Meyer hatchery and Stoney Ridge farmer thanks a lot found that like button and click the little bell icon down there don't notify you when I post a new video and we'll have some more fun with the chicks I hope you're learning a lot Thanks see you next time