Shopping List

What to plan on:

• Brooding supplies for your chick-nursery 
• Applying for your city permit 
• A sturdy, easy to clean, varmint-proof coop -- ready by about 6 weeks 
• Maintenance of coop: approx 10 minutes a day, 30 minutes on the weekend for a good cleaning, a few hours a couple times a year for a deep cleaning 
• Appropriate food & fresh water -- chicks start with "chick starter" and move to "layer mash" when then start laying. Folks at the feed store can steer you in the right direction. Chickens drink a lot and need fresh water every day. In the winter you'll have to plan for how to keep their water from freezing. There are plenty of products to help with this. 
• Lots of hand-sanitizer and soap to keep the chicken-poop off you & your guests 
• A collection of egg-recipes! (And start saving your empty egg cartons) 

Bare-bones day-old chick shopping list:

• Lamp with infrared bulb (they'll need to be a ~90 degrees for the first few days and then cooler and cooler after that) 
• Chick feeder & 50 lbs of chick feed 
• Waterer 
• Pine shavings 
• Big plastic tub (at a few weeks, you'll need a screen to keep them from flying out) 
• Thermometer (a digital one that we could read from inside was a good investment) 

Bare-bones pullet shopping list:

• Coop (make-your-own or buy an ok one online for ~$400*) - plan on at least ~1 sq-m per bird inside and 2 sq-m per bird outside 
• Pine shavings 
• Bigger feeder (unless you were smart enough to get a big one for your chicks) 
• Bigger waterer (ditto) 
• Scratch (cracked corn, etc, which is a good treat & a nice "stretcher" for when they're too old for chick-feed, but not old enough for layer-feed) 
• Feed (look for Pullet feed until your girls start laying) 
• Grit (basically little stones they keep in their crop to help "chew" food) 
• Calcium (once they start laying, they may want some supplemental calcium to make strong shells) 

*Our pretty-cheap coop (this one here) has lasted 3 years now, but I'd give it another 2 years, tops.  Our friends bought an awesome one for about $800 from builders they found on Craigslist that will probably last longer than our house.

Am I missing anything you found essential?

Want to come over and see our rig? Just ask in the comments -- give us some way to contact you.