“Spring Chicken Fever.” It’s a thing. As soon as those first blades of grass start stretching from their wintry slumber and the birds’ songs return to the treetops, the urge to have your own beaked-balls-of-fluff zipping around a little cardboard box is almost unbearable. Add to it the intoxicating chirps radiating from glowing feed troughs at the feed store, and it’s over. Resistance is futile. You can’t help but take some home!
But what if I told you that despite great feed store marketing, late summer may actually be a better time to start a new flock? …especially out here in the West. I can’t speak for regions that experience severely wet summer weather or early Autumns, but for those of us who remain relatively dry until October - late August is an ideal time to start chicks.
Good husbandry is often distinguished by good timing, allowing navigation along with nature’s current, rather than paddling upstream against it. Good timing relies on living in tune with the seasons, and the changes that naturally flow from them. The Lord’s book of nature is a generous teacher, if we would but slow down long enough to read…
Raise your hand if you’ve got one (or four) of these right now.
Hens will most often become broody (switching from egg laying to siting on a nest in order to hatch chicks) in the spring and summer months. However, despite wildfires, ambient smoke, drought, we have appreciated a greater number in broody hens in the summer in our area.
One precipitating factor may be heat stress suppressing ovulation (i.e. fewer eggs when its hot), and giving the hormone prolactin priority, thus pushing these girls into full blown “I’ve-gotta’-be-a-mama!” mode. As opposed to springtime, significantly less predator pressure, lower energy requirements, and efficient egg laying for the past several months (translating to a large clutch in a hen’s brain), would all contribute to late summer being the ideal time to hatch eggs.
The Delaware hen in that picture up there is almost 6 years in to her life on our farm, and I have pictures of her with early September chicks starting in 2017. She’s one tough mother. And while she can’t explain why she does this from year to year, she is consistent and she’s successful.
I wish I could say that my keen observation skills and connectedness to this creature led me from watching her behaviors to the conclusion that brooding chicks in August is a wise idea, because that would be cool. But I’d be lying. That’s the order in which it should have gone if I were smarter. But alas, thank God for His mercy on dumb creatures.
The light bulb turned on for me when I realized how little we had to use literal light bulbs (heat lamps) in the brooder, as compared to cooler months. Chicks need a consistent floor temperature of 90 degrees for their first days of life, and maintaining that during the summer is a piece of cake without supplemental heat.
Savings on the electric bill - check.
Fewer trips to the brooder to ensure the temperature is consistent - check.
The fuzzy thermophiles thrive in the hot weather during their first few weeks, and the heat also helps to combat the humidity that often threatens to suffocate a brooder. Carbon inputs-usually in the form of wood shavings-are necessary to help maintain a very dry environment in there, but the sheer quantity necessary during warm, dry weather is significantly less.
Improved air quality and healthier respiratory systems - check.
Fewer carbon inputs - check.
Thermoregulation is challenging for baby birds, hence the need for external heat supplementation via either a mama hen’s ventrum (underside) or the farmer’s husbandry. When it’s cool, chicks have to frequently be moving back and forth from their heat source to the feed, back to their heat source, then to water, and so on. Lot’s of caloric expenditure. But when the ambient temperature is to the chicks’ liking, this relay is less necessary and provides a systemic energy savings. Feed = energy. Less energy outputs equals less feed inputs.
Savings on the feed bill - check.
The weeks and months following the brooder stage bring with them more cause for gratitude that you started your chicks late summer. As the birds transition from chick-hood to pullet stage, they fledge their first sets of big kid feathers and lose their constant dependence on external thermoregulators. Just as Autumn begins to shorten and cool the days, the birds become more independent and ready to graduate to outdoor life, whether that be provided by a coop or tractor situation. The garden is aphid-heavy & ready to be torn out, and the young dinosaurs are more than ready to devour the spoils & create some beautiful compost for you.
Symbiosis - check.
As the cold of winter sets in, the younglings are looking like chickens, fully fledged, lovely young lay-dies. Now comes one of my favorite parts…
Mature hens are triggered to molt by short day length, which will in turn cause them to cease ovulation (egg production) and bring about the mid-winter egg famine, where we either fast from fresh eggs or break down and ugghhh…start buying eggs. *Cringe*.
But wait! You started a new flock in August! So come circa the turn of the year, guess what we start to see…eggs! The onset of the young hens’ reproductive lives will dominate their pituitaries, and most, if not all, of them will start to lay.
They’ll be small to medium eggs for a few weeks, but who cares? You’ve got eggs for breakfast, eggs for baking, eggs for egg-nog, and maybe a few to share with your friends that are lamenting having to purchase eggs until Spring. ;)
EGGS - check!
This approach can be applied to raising meat birds as well. If you raise Cornish crosses that only take 8 weeks to reach maturity, you’ve just brooded them in the warm weather, grown them in the mild, early fall, and harvested them before the hustle & bustle of Thanksgiving.
Of course, this approach is ideal for those of us in the dryer West, but with good husbandry, can be moved back a month or two and adapted for wetter climates.
So give it some thought…grab your coffee and take a morning walk, read your farmyard, read your hens, read your seasons. There’s no one-size-fits-all plan when it comes to husbandry, every farm has its own personality it must accommodate. But see if this concept will work in your own ecosystem, and if it does, consider it an early preventative measure against spring chicken fever.
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Woohoo 📝🇺🇸