Baby Chicks

[flamepony12]

My brother & I are thinking about getting chicks 4 xmas.... Probably
a Silver Sebright Batam for me and a Golden Sebright Batam for him.
any tips?

[flamepony12]

here are pix of the two breeds
This is the Silver

[flamepony12]

This is the gold

[flamepony12]

i don't really know what to do though... if they live in a chicken coop outside then they'll lure coyotes over and the coyotes will probably eat our little dog. hmmm.....

[Fox-Gal]

Cute chickens.

We have many many chickens here. New babies all the time!! We rasies Silkys. Ours do live outside and we never really had a problem with wild animals getting to them, but we do have the outside of their yard area set up with electral fencing, for the full sized chickens. So any animal that tries to get in, is in for a small shock. lol The smaller chickens have chain link around them. When they are babies they live inside till the get big enough to be moved out to the chain link area and then on to the chicken yard. We just hate seeing chickens pined up, it's just not our thing. In your case I don't know if that would work for you, only you know that.

But what ever you do, make sure they can get up high at night to sleep and be/feel safe. Even if you cage them, make the cage is high enough, to put pirches in for them and also big enough that they can still be active. Also remember that the more confined chickens are in a group they more likely it is that they will fight each other.

I can tell you that if you get them as small babies, make sure you put antibiotic called Terramycin in their water. You can get it at any feed store. Just put enough in to turn their water the color of pee. Do that for at least the first 3 weeks you have them. Keep them inside or caged with a heat lamp for awhile till them get bigger. Buy some chicken/ duck starter food and you are all set.

Also is for some reason your chicken act sick or doesn't want to eat, keep the Terramycin on hand and then you can soke a small piece of bread in water with the Terramycin and feed that to the chicken. Even when they don't eat chicken food, they always seem to eat the bread. It does wonders faster then you expected. It's also a good trick if their not drinking to much, soke the bread in water.

Well that all my chicken advice for you, hope it helps you decide.