What to Feed Baby Chicks?

Our hens ate homemade chicken feed until their abrupt passing. When it was time to get our chicks I thought I would make their feed as well. When I started to research chick starter recipes I immediately came across a forum that cautioned against making your own feed. I was a little discouraged and overwhelmed. While I knew it was still possible to make my own, the caution combined with the new demands of getting children off to school, I decided that I would buy my first bag of chick starter.

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Roosting Chicks

 

Around 4 weeks old our chicks started roosting on their feeder. This is just gross, because roosting chicks are pooping chicks.  I had planned on building beautiful roosts for my precious baby birds. But real life gets in the way of ideals.

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Chicken Escape

As I was writing a previous post one evening, when all the children were asleep, I heard the distressed screeches of a 4 week old chick. I raced down to the play area where the brooder sits and discovered a chick stuck in a small opening at the seam of the play pen/ brooder. My husband was right behind me and we discovered that many more of our flock of youngsters were hanging out between the draft protection and the actual "cage", unable to go any further. We quickly rescued these birds, but after a quick head count discovered that we were 4 chicks short. They couldn't have escaped through the tightly folded sheeting, they had to have jumped/ flown out of the top. We had caught one of the little ladies trying out her wings the day before when she flew up to the bar that holds the lamp but then hopped back down. So the search began. I discovered the first missing lass perched on a toy on the playroom bookcase.

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First Time Out

When the chicks were about three weeks old we decided to take them outside for the first time (while I was busy scrubbing out the brooder). We have a small outdoor pen we had used for our dog when she was a puppy that I pulled out of storage to accommodate the chicks and keep them safe (although we soon learned they could squeeze out the bars). At first the girls crowded together, initially I thought they might be too chilly (despite the 80+ degree weather) since they were huddled together so tightly, but after a few minutes they slowly started to poke around.

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Cleaning the Brooder

I am sure you have noticed a theme here; the baby chicks are awesome, wonderful little ladies full of cuteness and adventure. However they are messy. Keeping on top of the mess is the only way to make this little experiment pleasant possible.

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