All About Poultry Care: A Basic Guide to Chicken Keeping

Caring for poultry is both a rewarding and intricate task, whether you’re raising chickens for eggs, meat, or simply as pets. Proper poultry care involves understanding the unique needs of these birds, from nutrition and housing to health management and social behavior. Ensuring your flock is well taken care of not only improves their quality of life but also enhances productivity, making your poultry-keeping experience more fulfilling. Here we aim to provide you with some essential knowledge and practical tips on poultry care, helping you create a thriving environment for your feathered friends.

From setting up the perfect coop to tips for a healthly flock, poultry care covers a wide range of responsibilities. It’s crucial to be well-informed about the best practices for feeding, grooming, and monitoring your birds to keep them happy and healthy. By focusing on the principles of effective poultry care, you can prevent common problems and foster a robust, productive flock. No matter your poultry keeping experience, this guide will serve as a go-to resource for all aspects of poultry care, ensuring you provide the best possible environment for your birds.

Terms To Know

If you are new to chicken keeping, here are some basic poultry care terms you should know. Also, see a more comprehensive glossary of poultry terms.

FLOCK

A flock of chickens is a group of social birds that live together in a dominance hierarchy. Each chicken in the flock has a rank and a position in the pecking order. The pecking order is usually stable until new birds are added or an existing bird is removed, at which point the order must be re-established.

PULLET

A pullet is a female chicken under one year old.

COCKERAL

A cockerel is a male chicken under one year old.

HEN

A hen is a female chicken over one year old.

ROOSTER

A rooster is a male chicken over one year old.

MOLTING

The natural shedding of old feathers and the growth of new ones (see: All About Molting).

BROODY

A broody hen is a chicken that is determined to sit on a nest and hatch eggs (see: Broody Breaking).

Feeding for Maximum Health & Egg Production

Feed Ace Hi or Kelley’s Chick Starter until 8 weeks of age. Then feed a Grow Mash until they are 18 weeks old or if they have started laying eggs. Then it’s time to switch to Ace Hi Big Feeder or Kelley’s All Purpose Lay feeds. Check out the variety of poultry products we have available.

Adult hens eat approximately ¼ pound of feed per day.
You do not have to use a different feed for the roosters housed with your hens.
Feed chicken scratch only as an occasional treat. It is low in protein without the vitamins or minerals your hens need to reach their laying potential.
Do not feed moldy or wet feed.

Importance Of Water

Chickens must have clean, fresh water to digest their feed properly. Chickens drink water in small increments, frequently throughout the day. A chicken is more than 70% water and a large chicken will drink 1 to 2 cups a day, depending on the weather. Hens that do not get enough water will not lay properly because eggs are 65% water.

Tips For Healthy Chickens

Coop Management

Do not house new chickens in facilities previously used by another flock until the facilities have been thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. Provide spacious coops with adequate ventilation.

Never mix chicks or growing birds with adults. If you must mix birds of another flock with your existing flock, quarantine the new birds for a few weeks to ensure they are disease free. Always isolate sick birds from the rest of your flock.

Poultry Healthcare

Vaccinate your flock against diseases common to your area. Do not indiscriminately administer antibiotics as a preventative health care practice. Be sure to bring any health concerns to the attention of your veterinarian.

Temperature

The temperature should be around 90-95 degrees the first week your chicks are home, reduced about 5 degrees every week until they’re feathered. A good source of heat is a 250-watt bulb. Red bulbs are better than white because they cause less picking. Place the bulb 18 inches from the floor. The temperature directly under the bulb will be higher than 90 degrees but the birds will adjust themselves to the area they like. As the birds mature, make sure that the enclosure is big enough to allow the birds to get away from the heat if they need to in order to avoid heat stress.

If The Birds Had A Hard Trip

Add six tablespoons of sugar per gallon of water and mix the sweet water with some of your feed to make a soupy mix. Give your birds this special feed and water mix for 3 to 4 days to revive them of the effects of shipping.

Rear End “Pasting Up”

Sometimes manure can stick to the back of the bird. It is important to remove this daily. Pull it off gently or, better yet, wash it off with a cloth and warm water. It will disappear in a few days as the bird starts to grow.

Picking

Baby birds that pick at each other are probably too hot, too crowded, or need fresh air.

Who is Star Milling Company?

Star Milling Company is a local family-owned company in Southern California. We are proud to be a Certified Safe Feed/Safe Food Facility. All ingredients are sourced from the U.S.A. and Canada, not from China. The owner of Star Milling and his family have been raising commercial poultry and in egg production for nearly 80 years and feed Ace Hi and Kelley’s feeds to their own birds.

Visit our Poultry FAQ page for more information.

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