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Hobby Farms
Getting Started: Buying Your First Flock Of Baby Chicks
You ve decided you want chickens and have picked your breed(s) but how do you actually get baby chicks? Here are some pointers for starting your flock.
1.9K views PHOTO: Stefano Zocca/Unsplash
After numerous discarded lists and many hours of research, review and discussion, you have finally settled on the breed (or breeds) of chicken for your backyard flock. Breathe a sigh of relief. For many (including yours truly), this is the most arduous preliminary task. Next step: getting baby chicks.
This can be a breeze. Or it can be just as daunting as the previous one. It really depends on your choice of chooks.
60 Stabiliser suckler cows crossed to a Red Angus/Simmental-cross
700 Highlander ewes
Farm rises to 260m above sea level
Clay loam soil
Insect protein
An avian premix of vitamins and trace elements is supplemented with insects and worms as the birds follow a rotational grazing system behind cattle.
Crucially, the wild insect protein helps to offset the removal of soya from the diet. “I believe this element of the diet is crucial to the flavour, and definitely helps in terms of protein requirements, but the feed ration my supplier has devised is a complete feed in itself.”
Mr Chapple also grows multispecies leys and direct drills oats and barley; he is considering producing insects too. “If we can do that within the rules in this country that would be great, but there are some Defra regulations that restrict the use of insects,” he says.