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Download the eBook Edition Today for Only $9.95! Success With Baby Chicks A Complete Guide to Hatchery Selection, Mail-Order Chicks, Day-Old Chick Care, Brooding, Brooder Plans, Feeding, and Housing by Robert Plamondon Norton Creek Press, March, 2003. ISBN 0972177000. 155 pages. Suggested Retail price, $15.95. In Success With Baby Chicks, I cover everything you need to know about raising chicks through the brooding period (starting with day-old chicks and ending when they no longer need extra heat), with an emphasis on clear, upbeat, practical advice. The book includes many "Lost Secrets of the Poultry Masters": pieces of advice that were once widely publicized but have been largely forgotten. I devote entire chapters to subjects that are normally dismissed in a paragraph or two, such as litter or waterers. Overhead infrared lamp brooding has a chapter to itself. Cold-weather brooding is discussed in detail. I do it because these things are important. Skimping on detail, which is what most books do, leaves the reader in the dark, and the chicks suffer.

My Early Troubles With Baby Chicks

Like many people, sometimes I had good results with my baby chicks and sometimes I didn't. There didn't seem to be any pattern to it. It was very frustrating, and it made me shy away from raising as many chicks as I needed for my farm. I had gone into free-range egg production almost by accident, and I was never going to get anywhere unless brooding chicks went from a dreaded chore to a high point of the year.

Never knowing whether your baby chicks are going to live or die casts a terrible pall of uncertainty and gloom over any poultry operation. No one can enjoy a poultry hobby or maintain an interest in a poultry business if their flocks suffer from high mortality year after year. I don't even want to think about the effect it has on kids, who go into a poultry project brimming with optimism.

How I Turned Things Around

I had the good luck to meet a retired lady who had raised 30,000 chicks a year for many years, and insisted that raising chicks can be done with almost perfect success on any scale. She claimed she lost 1% of the chicks during the first week (from shipping-related stress), and the rest all survived to maturity. Bold claims, but she wasn't the only one to report such results.

I have the good fortune to live near Oregon State University, which has hundreds of poultry books and magazines in its library, dating back to before 1900. I flipped through all of them, read most of them, and learned all kinds of things that used to be well known, but are now forgotten. Small farms and small flocks used to be the norm, and agricultural research then as now focused on the mainstream. This means that the literature of 50-100 years ago is filled with tested, proven, practical small-farm poultry techniques. Our grandparents' generation knew a lot about chickens. First I read about their techniques, then I tried them. Then I read some more. A lot of concepts didn't sink in all at once, because the information was scattered, and sometimes really crucial ideas were mentioned only in passing. But I kept at it.

My results with baby chicks got better and better. It wasn't that I had been doing just one or two things wrong with my initial batches of chicks. I had been doing dozens of things wrong! My initial reading of "modern" poultry books hadn't prepared me. And not only did I lack knowledge about techniques -- I didn't know any of the warning signs of trouble. Things would get really bad before I knew that anything was wrong at all.

How Well Does it Work?

My most recent brooding experience went like this: I bought 150 pullet chicks in May, 2003. When I moved them out of the brooder house on July 2, I had 154 live pullets! Negative mortality! It's not really a miracle (hatcheries add extra chicks to cover losses in shipping), but it's pretty good by anybody's standard. And with the techniques I give in my book, these results are typical.

Not only do these techniques work better, they can save you money. In Chapters 7 and 8, I tell you how to build an insulated electric brooder in two hours for about $20, which uses only about one-third the amount of electricity as overhead heat lamps, and does a better job besides.

You Can Have The Same Success

None of these techniques are very complicated. I can and do explain them fully in Success With Baby Chicks. My goal is to give you the same kind of results and understanding in just one book that took me hundreds of books and more than five years to achieve.

My goal doesn't include getting you to buy lots of expensive equipment. Being successful with baby chicks depends on your understanding of the chicks and their needs. The actual equipment and housing requirements are quite basic, and are much the same whether you are brooding ten chicks or a thousand.

About My Farm

I have a flock of 600 free-range laying hens, and my wife Karen Black raises about 2,000 pastured broilers per year. Our enjoyment of farming and the financial success of our farm depend on raising large numbers of chicks successfully. See a variety of press write-ups of our farm at http://www.plamondon.com/Norton_Creek_Farm.html.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Brooding Quick-Start
Chapter 3 Breed and Hatchery Selection
Chapter 4 Chooosing Profitable Breeds
Chapter 5 Brooding Basics
Chapter 6 Overhead Heat Lamp Brooders
Chapter 7 Insulated Heat Lamp Brooders
Chapter 8 More About Insulated Heat Lamp Brooders
Chapter 9 Battery Brooders
Chapter 10 Other Brooders
Chapter 11 Feeding
Chapter 12 Waterers
Chapter 13 Litter
Chapter 14 Brooder Houses
Chapter 15 Health Problems and Predators
Chapter 16 Useful Tables
Chapter 17 Recommended Reading
Chapter 18 For More Information

Read the Sample Chapters!

Chapter 2. Brooding Quick-Start
 

A Testimonial

Thanks for your help. The book is an excellent resource. I have already made back the $12.00.

Ron Theusch
Alden, MN
 

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