Hi everyone
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We have decided that we don't want to go down the hatching route, and had initially decided to go for POL hens. However, we went to have a look at some today, and saw some just over 2 week old chicks for sale. They were not under heat lamps or anything, although were indoors in the sales area of the place we visited.
So..I have a couple of questions:
1. How young can you buy chicks without the need for heat lamps/incubators etc
2. What is the care for such young chicks? The ones we saw today were just over two weeks old. When would they be old enough to go outside into the coop and stay there?
3. I have a large hamster cage with small mesh (for the tiny russian hamsters), would that be ok to keep 4 chicks in for a week or two before moving them onto an indoor guinea pig cage (with larger mesh), or do I just move them into the coup?
4. What sort of material should I put on the floor of the cage while they are so young ? Is it chopped up straw and wood shavings? What about when they go in the coup? Same thing or something else?
5. Finally....All the chicks we saw today were RIR/LS. We really would like our four chickens to be different so we can tell them apart. Prefer same size birds, not small, and good egg layers. Coop we have bought holds up to 8 but we only want 4. Will they all get on together if they have not been in the same run/place before? I know they establish their pecking order, just curious if they have any kind of 'inter chuck discrimination' if we mix the breeds. Not having a cockerel, so hopefully they will be pre-sexed too.
Many thanks and sorry for all the questions.
Kind regards
Gerry
Any help would be very much appreciated.