When the Chicks Hatch

What happens when little baby-chicks hatch from eggs? Newly hatched chicks need heating available any moment. After being hatched, they stay in our house for 2-3 weeks, on the special shelves built for this purpose, with a heating plate installed there. 

When it gets warmer outside, we transfer them to our backyard into the mobile chicken coops with a heating lamp. 

When they become 5-6 weeks old, they don't need heating anymore, and we move them to the farm to the mobile chicken coops there.

Usually one of the adult roosters become their "teacher" who keeps them warm on cold nights. He also teaches them basic chicken skills and safety behavior such as how to scratch the earth and find insects, not be afraid of human feeding you, run away from a predator when it approaches you, and so on.

When little chicks grow up, approximately at the age of 4-5 months, the young roosters start to sing and sometimes to fight with each other and even with their "daddy-the-teacher", young hens start laying eggs (very small at first), and that's the sign that their childhood is over.

They get split the same way as other adult chickens on our farm: the hens are kept together with one rooster to 5-6 hens, and the rest of the rooster are relocated to the "roosters only" coops.

Before winter comes, all our young chickens who are now 7-8 months old, get merged into the adult chicken flock in the main chicken barn.