If you are hoping to start your own backyard flock, you can purchase full grown chickens or you might choose to start with chicks. Even if you choose to start your flock with adult chickens, you will probably have some chicks at some point if you have a rooster. While adult chickens will cost more per chicken, you might find yourself spending what you have saved by buying chicks on the equipment that is needed to raise them.
First Weeks
The most important needs for chicks are food, water, and heat. They will need a safe enclosure that will keep them inside and any potential predators outside. We used a small 50 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank for the first couple of weeks. Ours was kept in the house but a garage or outbuilding would also work, as long as you can keep their enclosure temperature between 90-95F degrees. We filled the bottom with about 2 inches of pine shavings and covered the top with chicken wire to keep out curious cats. Below is a picture of our chicks not long before we moved them to a larger space.
Awkward Tweens
Once the chicks begin to grow feathers and outgrow their stock tank, we have a larger enclosure that we move them to. We built this larger enclosure in a room in our home that we mostly use for storage for now. They do not have all of their feathers in yet so they cannot fully regulate their body temperature. We also put a heat lamp in the larger enclosure, but only in one spot so the chicks could move in and out of the heat as needed. 
This larger enclosure is 5’x7’. The base is a 2”x6” frame with a piece of old pool liner attached to the frame to protect my floor. We then ran chicken wire around the inside of the wooden frame, stapled it to the frame, and then screwed boards on to sandwich the wire between the board and the frame. The upper part is made of metal pipe that was once used as canopy frames. You could use metal or pvc pipe or make your upper frame out of wood. Just make sure that your materials are sturdy if you plan to hang food and water from the frame. We keep our chicks in this larger enclosure until they have all of their feathers and we feel like they are ready to move outside.
On a side note: If you choose to keep your chicks in your house, keep in mind that the constant scratching creates a lot of dust. As much dust as you have in mind that your chicks will create, you will want to multiply that by at least 10 and you should be closer to the real amount. I had no idea there would be that much so this is a lesson that I learned the hard way. (As I add more posts to this blog, you will see that I learn a lot of things the hard way!)
Teenagers
Our family recently built an outside run for our teenage chickens. There are more technical and correct terms, but I prefer to call them teenagers. This was a project that needed to be led by the adults but that even the younger kids could help with. We have an abundance of metal canopy frame so that is what we also used for the frame of this run. This run needed to be larger since it was being built to house multiple breeds together so we decided to make this one 20’x10’. In order to be able to comfortable walk around inside it, we chose to use 72” poultry wire. We zip tied the wire to the top of the frame and to the vertical poles. There are 6” wide boards run around the entire perimeter of the bottom of the outside that the wire is stapled to. Then we put a 6” board on the inside of each section and screwed it to the outside board with the wire between the 2 pieces. There is also poultry wire covering the top of the run. I am sure that there are better ways to secure the wire than zip ties and I am sure that we will improve on that in time. But, for now, zip ties were in the budget.
As you can see in the photo, we cut an opening in the wire for a doorway. My husband and 16 year old son made a door and a frame on the run to attach it to. They used the wire that cut to make the opening to cover the door. There are 2 different types of latches installed on the door to deter raccoons and screen door hinges to make it self-closing.
I thought that we were finished at this point. We have not, to this point, had issues with predators in our other coops. However, it took just over a week for them to find this one and dig under the frame enough to start pulling chickens out. I still have no idea how an animal that small (footprints indicated nothing larger than a raccoon) managed to pull a chicken out of a hole that small. But whatever it was ate everything but bones and feathers. So now this run has hardware cloth around the bottom as well as on the ground around the outside. We then covered this in dirt. So far, this has worked. 
Up to this point, our teenagers are always a mixture of boys and girls. However, while they are still too young to lay, we keep all of our teenagers together regardless of breed. If you have an outbuilding that you can use for chicks, I would highly recommend that option. This would keep the dust and mess contained as well as provide a single environment to raise your chicks in until they can be moved to a coop or run.