Poultry Keepers Podcast

Best Practices In Brooding Baby Chicks-Part 1

• Rip Stalvey, Jeff Mattocks • Season 2 • Episode 96

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In this episode, Rip Stalvey and Jeff Mattocks dive deep into best practices for brooding baby chicks. Whether you’re raising a small backyard flock or managing a large brooding setup, starting chicks off right is the key to developing healthy, productive birds.

Topics covered include:

·      Brooder setup and spacing for chicks

·      Ideal brooding temperatures and how to manage heat sources

·      Expert feeding techniques, including using liver and egg for early nutrition

·      Choosing the best bedding materials (peat moss, pine shavings, and more)

·      Early growth benchmarks and why they matter

·      Natural approaches to support chick gut health

·      Real-world tips and live Q&A insights

If you’ve ever wondered how to avoid common chick issues like pasty butt, prevent early mortality, or get your chicks off to a strong start, this is the episode for you. Plus, learn why observing chick behavior is one of the best tools you can use for brooding success!

Visit www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com for more expert poultry care tips, show notes, and bonus content. Don’t forget to LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE for more poultry health, breeding, and nutrition episodes!

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Alex:

Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast. In this episode we'll be sharing Part one of a livestream that Rip Stallvee and Jeff Mattocks recorded last Thursday evening discussing the best practices of brooding baby chicks. This show is packed with helpful information you can use to get your chicks started right so they will have a long and productive life. Now here's Rip and Jeff.

Rip Stalvey:

We're gonna be diving into the best practices for brooding baby chicks doesn't make any difference whether you're raising a small backyard flock or managing a larder brooding setup. Starting your chicks off right is the key to a healthy, productive birds in the future. We'll cover everything from selecting the proper brooder size and maintaining ideal temperatures to providing the best feed, clean water, and preventing common check illnesses. If you've ever wondered how to avoid pasty butt. We're gonna solve that problem for you. Don't forget to ask your questions, and we'll share expert tips and real world reading experiences. So let's give your chicks the best start possible. Here we go. I'm not even gonna play our intro music tonight. How about that, Jeff? I think the first thing we probably should cover is the eh, brooder setup, some people forget to have the brooder ready before they get the chicks and that's backward from what it ought to be. They ought to have the brooder set up and ready to go before the chicks get there, either in the mail or from the store or before you hatch'em. But what are your thoughts about how much space for baby chicks? What do we need?

Jeff Mattocks:

I did want to, I wanted to say the best brooder, the best people that I've ever met in my life, brooding. Their brooder was set up to temperature and running, fully running 24 hours before the chicks ever. I even thought about showing up because it gives you time to troubleshoot. Oh, do I got a bad heater? Do I got a bad bulb? Do I got right? And so 24 hours before that chick ever gets to the burger, but look, square space and square footage for chicks is and I learned this the hard way, right? This is coming from years of experience, okay? That first three days. At least the first three days. You want four chicks per square foot. Or let me say it the other way, just for clarity. One quarter of a square foot per chick. Okay? So if you have eight chicks, that's two square feet. If you got four chicks, that's one square feet. 12 chicks is three square feet. Okay? And here's why you do this. Okay. And within that space I want a couple sources of feed and a couple sources of water. I really don't want a chick to move more than about six inches without bumping into food or water. Okay. Because those two are critical in the first 48 hours to get those in into a check in that first 48 hours, I can't even tell you how critical that is. And we just did a little experiment with one of our listeners, Kelly Gear up in Saskatchewan. So yesterday, Kelly, his chicks just moved from the incubator slash hatcher to the brewer. Robert Water was warmed up. We put a tablespoon of sugar in one quart of water. And it was already up the room temperature and warm and the whole bit. And, but for that first feed we chopped up a tablespoon of liver, beef, liver, and we chopped up a half of a hard boiled egg, right? And we mixed that with one handful, one large handful, about four ounces of feed. And that was their first feed. And. Kelly was ecstatic, right? He could not believe his eyes at how ravenous those chicks were for that feed. Okay? Just they were piling on it, right? They'd eat a little bit, walk away, get a little drink, they took five minute nap, they come right back and just hammered it. So this was noon time-ish, middle of the day when they moved into the brewer and, it was about three, three or four hours later, he said they got that on right. They just cleaned it up, right? And he was gonna prepare some more, to take'em through the night. And that was 18. 18 chicks, right? Wipe that out in a matter of hours. And that is encouraging. That is what I want to see because absolutely, the sooner I get solid nutrition in them, the better my chances are they're gonna be something when they grow up.

Rip Stalvey:

No I gotta say, I've done the chopped up egg and mixed that in with feed, but it never occurred to me to use liver as well. That's just so logical that would be. Man, that would just really drive'em nuts to eat that. I can see that.

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

It's loaded with B vitamins. It's in, it's got

Oh, yeah. A really

Jeff Mattocks:

nice fat level to it. It's easy to digest. It's not a, it's not a co stringy type of, meat, protein. Plus it holds all the fines. So if you're using a mash feed or you're adding some supplement to it or something like that, it help between the moisture of the egg and the moisture of the liver. It binds it all together. But he was just, I hope he tunes in tonight and can expound upon it, but, oh yeah. He was just, I, we were on a live, messenger, video call. And he was just like. Man, look at him. Go at it. Give me just constantly almost like he was watching some sort of, professional sport and something was happening every second's and they were just watching baby

Rip Stalvey:

chicks do that kind of thing. That, that just really warms my heart. I'll be honest with you. I love to watch'em. Oh, that, that's just great. But you can better, you can rest assured I'm not giving it baby chicks, anything else but feed that's got some chopped liver in it.

Jeff Mattocks:

It, it was amazing, right? And I knew what was gonna happen. And they asked if that was chicken liver, no, it was beef liver. I am not a fan of feeding the same species back to each other. Okay. Yeah it was, we just used beef liver, calf liver. I don't know. I feel weird about feeding chicken back to chicken. And pigs back to pigs and cow, back to cow. I understand that. It just crosses a line. Yeah. It just crosses a line for me. I can't do it. But Carol asked if it was raw liver. Yes, absolutely raw liver. Don't cook it. Okay. There's so many more nutrients in, in raw liver. Laura. Yes. Lamb, liver is good also and. As long as it ain't chicken goose or, something of the foul family. I'm good

Rip Stalvey:

now that, that was a half a boiled egg, white and yolk. Right?

Jeff Mattocks:

So what I did is I break it down. It used to be I just used the boiled egg, right? White and yolk, but it would, and I always figured. One egg for every 25 chicks. But I wanted to enter in with the liver this time, so I split the egg. So it was a half a hard boiled egg, large hard boiled egg, and basically a heaping tablespoon raw liver that was diced up fine. And so he put the handful of feed in the center. Now look I did, we didn't put it in a container. We put it on a piece of newspaper. Thick enough to hold it right about 12 by 12. Put it, put the handful of feed in there and then put the egg and the liver, just plopped it on top. We didn't mix it in. We just, and then set her down in there. They did all the mixing by themselves. Within 30 minutes they had it pancaked down and we're working it really hard. And so I, I didn't want any obstructions. The reason we didn't put it in a bowl or a pan or anything like that. I wanted it level surface. So they weren't tripping on anything. They could get right up to it.

Rip Stalvey:

Makes sense. Yeah. And second,

Jeff Mattocks:

second, feeding. He put it in about a six, six inch bowl that only had half, three quarter of an inch lip around the edge, but once they knew what was in the middle of that bowl. I, they were doing high jumps to get in there and night. They were just, okay. That's

Rip Stalvey:

what you call getting'em off

Jeff Mattocks:

the strong start. Sitting there washing your chickens at all ages is hilarious, right? It is. I, if you don't have'em for the entertainment value you got'em for the wrong reason.

Rip Stalvey:

You're missing out on so much because they can so much. Wow. They're crazy. I love watching them. Rob says you should see baby chicks, even hours old, fight over and chase each other over live mealworms. I believe it. Yeah, I believe it. That wiggle factor gets their attention. Yeah. What about. Bedding in a brooder. I know you like peat moss. I do, I have switched myself to a mixture of peat moss and pine shavings, fine pine shavings just to hold down some of the dust because of the situation where I've got my brooder. But

Jeff Mattocks:

yeah, if you got it indoors, which a lot of people do it. It's gonna get you in trouble with the housekeeper,

Rip Stalvey:

It's in the garage, but still it wass its way into the house. It does. And

Jeff Mattocks:

so key factor is, the important part is seven, about close, five to seven days on. I like Pete Moss only in that first five to seven days. Here's why Pete Moss looks like dirt or soil. It doesn't look like feed. I don't have chicks eating little pieces of wood chips because feed and wood pine shavings, and I don't really want that dense fiber in their digestive tract that early. Okay? So that's the only reason and. Here's my defense for Pete Moss. And I know people hate it because of the dust. There's, all kinds of stuff, but it's naturally sterile. Okay? Comes right out of the bog sterile, and it's a low pH so it slows down, or retards, potential pathogen, building from the manure, co acidosis, things like that. It's really distinguishable for them as far as what's feed, what's not. And actually if I have it in there for over a week by itself, they start dusting in it, and they start displaying, their natural chicken ness and pretty neat.

Rip Stalvey:

I like it. I think anything we can do to bring out that chicken, as you say in those. As early as possible. I think they, it just makes for a better chicken. Just personal thoughts.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. I think, I think we're triggering instinct. I think the sooner we can trigger instinctual activity, right? I think it gives us a stronger, more instinctual bird when older, right? If we can play into their natural instinct I really think that's a win-win.

Rip Stalvey:

Absolutely. Laura wants to know, going back to the. Beef liver. Yeah. How long do you feed that initial egg, liver feed mix.

Jeff Mattocks:

So we're gonna do this for the first, four or five days. And then we're gonna switch to every other day. And then, later on in the second week, early third week, we're gonna go to every third day. Okay. So we're gonna gradually reduce it. The other thought process behind doing that mixture is. It gets'em on feed faster. And kelly's using a really coarse mash, like you can see the whole oats and bigger pieces there even for day old chicks. Okay. So I know people are sitting there cringing thinking they can eat that no, they sure can. Yeah. Actually they can. Just like Rob said, them fighting over a mealworm well is a whole lot bigger than a,

Rip Stalvey:

than a,

Jeff Mattocks:

a kernel of oat,

Rip Stalvey:

absolutely.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. I want to, now I'm teaching them, to eat the feed right and just slowly wean'em off over the course of about three weeks, and by then gonna be, you're,

Rip Stalvey:

go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, it's gonna be really interesting to see. What Kelly thinks is those chicks at the end of that period,

Jeff Mattocks:

they're gonna be huge Rip. They're gonna be huge. Oh, they are. I know,

Rip Stalvey:

but I'm just happy for him that he's doing this. Man. That's great.

Jeff Mattocks:

I don't know if he can get it done'cause he's got his hands full, but, I'd really like for'em to weigh them weekly. And start, cataloging them. Because no one yeah. We already went through this way back in the Karen days, we tried to get, nobody knows what any of the heritage breeds way on a weekly basis, right? There is no data out there. There's nothing to go with the standard that says you're Rhode Island red at Hatch will weigh this many grams. Okay. At one week old, you're Rhode Island red. We'll weigh this right at two weeks old, your Rhode Island Red Chick will weigh this. Nobody has set a standard, all the commercial breeds, right? All the Cornish cross people, all the, all the laying in people. It's all out there. They'll tell you exactly. Convenient.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. They'll tell you exactly what you know, a pullet should weigh what a. They at every day. Actually not week. They will tell you every day of its life what that performance objective is. It's amazing. And, people are like why do I need to know that? Okay, so if rips Rhode Island, reds weigh a pound at five weeks old, right? And Karen's or someone else's Rhode Island Reds only weigh. 12 ounces. That's a huge difference. How do you know if you're hitting the benchmarks? How do you know if you're as good as you think you are? Or, there's just no way. Now working with breeders now for, I think it's coming up on maybe 10 or a little bit more years since I started, even back in the Jim Atkins days. There's just no data out there, and there's no benchmarks. No, but with, we have found that with better feed, with better management, with better environment, with, we are seeing like First Egg we're seeing puberty in males almost like four, four to six weeks earlier than people had experienced in the past.

Okay.

Jeff Mattocks:

So we're seeing what the breed possibility or potential is. Yeah. And that's good. That's absolutely, we want I think we want to see, what did your cock rolls weigh at 24 weeks or Rip. I don't know. See, you're asking the question. It would agreed to know that, for me

Rip Stalvey:

to think I, I honestly, I'd have to go back and look it up, but I've got it. But were they, do we have anything else we can compare

Jeff Mattocks:

it to?

Rip Stalvey:

Were they bigger than they normally would've been? And the feed outta that Triple N feed? Yeah. They were bigger than what they had been in the past. Not humongously bigger, but noticeably bigger.

Jeff Mattocks:

Noticeably bigger, yep.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah. Ariel's got a question here. She wants to know, how do you feel about horsepower specifically for Bandon Hook, since they are a watery mess?

Jeff Mattocks:

I don't have any experience with the pine pellets and I,

Rip Stalvey:

I, I don't either.

Jeff Mattocks:

I know. I know Carrie and Jennifer at Bryan Roost and some other people are really liking the hemp pellets, which to me would be a lot the same. I don't wanna blow people's minds but this is, we did this field trial right at for trial. With a, with an intern. And if anybody wants to see the published field trial, that's fine. I'll happily send it to whoever the field trial comparison was. Peat moss compared to pine shavings. Okay. Now, it wasn't just about moisture and manure control, but it was also at the detection or the management of odors and ammonia. Okay. This was our trial. We had 2 8, 8 square foot brooders, eight by eights. Each one had 50 chicks in it Okay. That we were raising up and we'd finish'em later. But we did peat moss and one brooder, and we did shavings in the other brewer. Tractor supply. Nothing fancy, just, the medium. Are we back?

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, there you go. You dropped off for a minute. Okay. You said the medium, then I lost it.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. We used the medium pine shavings like everybody else does. Here's what we found. We'd used five and a half bales of pine shavings. We only used one bale of peat moss. One of the 3.4 cubic feet or whatever. The bales are it. Okay. Five and a half to one ratio for managing the brooder. Okay. And observation wise, when we went in and we put new shavings in, the chicks all ran to the other side of the brooder to get away from it. They were scared to death of it. When we beded, when we added more bedding with the peat moss, the chicks all ran up to be the first ones to jump in. Okay. It was like New Sand in the sandbox for a bunch of toddlers. Okay. And that's the best way I can describe it. So five and a half to one ratio as far as moisture holding capacity, odor control. Okay. So it, it is pretty amazing stuff.

Rip Stalvey:

There's no doubt in my mind that pea moss holds more moisture than pine shavings. Yeah. Or I think even the pine pellets would just.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah,

Rip Stalvey:

what I've experienced

Jeff Mattocks:

somebody needs to do, there's a trial that somebody needs to do, right? You need to get like a quart jar of, peat moss and a quart jar of pine shavings and a quart jar of hemp pellets and a pine pellets, whatever, right? And, add a known amount of water to it. Give it however much time you think is fair and see, see which one holds the moisture better. Who, what absorbs it quicker Anyway, man we get, we went way down rabbit holes here. Sorry. No,

Rip Stalvey:

that's okay. That's okay. That's okay. Katie Alexander says, my daughter is working on a dual purpose project for Rhode Island Reds for their fair. I'd love to see a chart like that for her. I agree. Maybe that's a good thing that she could start doing, Laura. Or Katie, I'm sorry,

Jeff Mattocks:

it's not, yeah, it's not published. And nothing within recent years. Nobody really has that number,

Rip Stalvey:

not at all. We getting a lot of questions tonight. I'm trying to get my wyandots larger with the feed. Will it feed regimens such as this? Help Certainly get'em off to a good start. No doubt about it.

Jeff Mattocks:

It will, if the genetics are not there to make a larger bird right? You can only take'em to their genetic potential. Now we can get'em there faster. Okay, but can I make it any bigger? Than the parent stock was. And that's where, selective breeding, that's working through your genetics and keeping the bigger ones and working yourself up.'cause it's not, you can only go so far.

Rip Stalvey:

Right. And don't forget that heavier is not necessarily bigger. That's not what you really want. You don't necessarily want a heavier bird. I think she's wanting a larger body frame.

Jeff Mattocks:

Right.

Rip Stalvey:

So

Jeff Mattocks:

that's, and that's really all. That's all coming. You can impact it a little bit nutritionally, but at the end of the day, it's gonna be, you know what the genetics are. Parent stock, genealogy of that family or that line.

Rip Stalvey:

Huh? Ariel says she's on it. Good girl.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay.

Rip Stalvey:

All right.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yep. I'd love to see it. Something. Oh man.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah. And Rob wants to know, has Pete Moss whoop click? Has Pete Moss gone up in price as much as shavings have? I haven't priced, I really don't know

Jeff Mattocks:

the book. Yeah. And there's a good chance that both are coming from Canada. And that could be part of the reason. So it probably has gone up, at about the same rate as the shavings, but I haven't bought any. I don't know.

Rip Stalvey:

Katie's gonna stick her daughter on that little project. She said I'll get her to start one. Awesome.

Jeff Mattocks:

It'll be nice.

Rip Stalvey:

And let's see, double oz. What about using dry leaves for bedding and coop once fully feathered in the co.

Jeff Mattocks:

Depends on what the leaves are. Okay. So I have seen some leaves. One, they come in contact with moisture in a coop that they will have a secondary fermentation. So they, particularly your trees with more sugary SAPs to'em. So there's a higher sugar content in the leaf. So you can. And leaves come in with their own set of fungis as well, so you wanna watch for the little white spots on'em, which is a fungus growth. You just need to monitor, you should monitor the temperature of the leaves, so if they start composting again just make sure you got good airflow and be careful. Yeah, most of the time nobody has a problem with it. And, I got a close friend br bedded with, dried leaves and it was okay until one time it wasn't. So if they weren't truly dry, before you put'em away or stored'em, then they will ferment again.

Rip Stalvey:

Let's talk just briefly about temperature and heat sources. This. I know this is something we've beaten to death over the years, but I like to start chicks out. Tell folks to start their chicks out at 95 degrees Fahrenheit and then decrease it five degrees each week. Down here where I am it's gets so hot, so fast that I actually start my chicks out at 90 degrees and then decrease it five degrees a week. And I used to have a problem with my reds, the males, which had these large single cones. The cones would get real big and real beepy and the waddles would get super long, too long. But by reducing that brooder temperature, five degrees, I was able to get that back under control to where it really ought to be. So just something to think about.

Jeff Mattocks:

That's interesting. I didn't, wouldn't have known that it would've stimulated that, comb and waddle growth that much fat. I understand it's the air conditioning, the chicken. Yeah. And I, yeah. But yeah, chicks are 95. Turkey should be 97, 98, even a hundred depending on, where you're at. After two weeks, they can start to regulate their own body temperature. They cannot do that in the first 14 days. Okay. So with all that being said now the books say you can drop one degree per day, which would be about seven degrees a week. If you're technologically advanced enough to do that, you can drop one degree per day starting on day 15. And you can harden'em right off. Pretty much for most people, you can harden'em off within another, week or two depending on where you live and what the outside temperatures are. But by four weeks they should be able to withstand, they should be fully feathered and, hard feathers. And they should, they should be able to withstand whatever the ambient temperatures are, as long as they don't have a draft on them and they're not getting wet. You should be in good shape.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, drafts is a killer. You gotta really watch that. It is feed, we beat that to death with the liver and boiled egg, but I like to use a non-medicated Kickstarter. And when it comes to co acidosis I have. I learned how to whip that using whole raw milk or if I can't get that, which is often the case down here, I'll use something like plain Greek yogurt non-fat, live cultured, non pasteurized yogurt. And that works pretty good. That provides the gut bacteria that helps them ward off Coccidia Oocysts

Alex:

This concludes part one of Best Practices in Brooding Baby Chicks. We hope you learned something new to improve brooding your chicks this year. Before we go we want to remind you to visit our new website at, w w w dot the Poultry Keepers Podcast dot com. Be sure to share it with a friend so they can take advantage of all the poultry information that's there too. Until next time, keep learning, improving, and enjoying your flock. So long and we'll be back next week.

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

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