What you'll need
This is what we got in our brood box kit
Brood Box
A brood box is essentially a box that you keep the chicks in. The first time around we hired a fancy brood box which had inbuilt light. It had a glass display on one side and was a pain in the butt to keep clean. For our second time around, we used a plastic tub and put some aviary wire over the top to stop them jumping out. This was great as we could just hose out the plastic tub to keep it clean.
Our plastic tub brood box
The first time around, we had the brood box inside our spare room mainly because we were worried about cats eating them, but oh my god they stink. So the second time around they were demoted to under the house. Just keep them somewhere where they are away from rain and drafts.
Bedding
In the kit we received from the chicken place, we were given wood chips. I found these hard to clean and stunk up the place. The second time around we used straw, it was much easier to clean up and allowed their poop to drop to the bottom and they wouldn't get pooey feet. It is super important that you keep their home clean to avoid them picking up any nasty diseases. A sick day old chick is pretty much a goner.Light for warmth
When first born, chicks are little fluff balls with no feathers for protection and spend a lot of time sitting under the warmth of their mothers. Until they get this protection you really need to keep them warm. We used a desk lamp with a 100w incandescent light globe. If you live in a cooler climate you may want to check out something a little more powerful. Place your light in one corner of your brood box so the chicks can move away if they feel like it's too warm.Food
The food we used was a chick starter and you can get this from most produce stores (if you're inner city just look in the outer suburbs where there are more acreage lots and you should be able to find a produce store, most pet shops wont stock this). The chick starter often has extra bits added into it to give them the best start. I also highly recommend a feeder that wont allow your chicks to poop and scratch (natural instinct) otherwise you'll waste a lot of food or end up with sick chicks.Water
Fresh clean water, always. Again this is to stop diseases, but who wants to drink pooey water! You can get specialised water dishes to stop them from drowning in it, and I did find that I had to replace this a couple of times a day due to the stray poo floating in there. When they were a bit bigger, they would go through this pretty quickly so I swapped to a takeaway container.Caring for your day old chicks
There isn't much you need to do other than keep your chicks warm, keep the brood box clean, with fresh food and clean water. They do get stinky. At around 4 weeks old your chicks are old enough to start getting some outside time, and when they have lost all their fluff (around 8-12 weeks) they can live outside (depending on your climate).
Outside time, As you can see Lucy was still adjusting to the feathered friends.
You will need to introduce your chicks to existing chickens with caution. We setup a small house for our second lot of chicks away from the bigger chickens to avoid any fights and they got used to each other slowly.
We made a little makeshift coop for the chicks to separate them from the bigger chickens
It will probably be a long time before we grow day old chicks again, not sure I can handle the stink again (but to be fair I was pregnant so that might have made things a lot worse) but I am glad we went through the process of raising from day old, even if they are psycho chickens!