How often do you handle your baby chicks?

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switters

switters

In the Brooder
11 Years
Nov 3, 2008
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How often do you handle your baby chicks? I've read that we should handle them "regularly" if we want them to become accustomed to human contact. But what exactly does "regularly" mean? Once a day? Several times a day?

When we put our hands down in the brooder to pick up our chicks, they scatter in terror! Once we pick them up they seem pretty content. Most of them, anyways. There are a couple that just seem really averse to being held, and they are also the hardest to get hold of.
 
We gentled ours with bread. Everytime we put our hand in we had a piece of bread in it. They started running to the door when they heard us outside. Know full grown and outside they scare friends because they come swarming up anytime we go to the back.
 
Thanks for your reply. We tried doing that with the chick starter (putting it in our hand), but that didn't do the trick. I guess we need better treats! Can one week old chicks eat bread?
 
The 1st chicks we had wasn't handled much at all. None of them were that people friendly. This is our 3rd bunch and they were handled every day. After a while it seemed like they knew where the food really came from and would run to us at first sight. Now...they are under our feet every where we walk. It's all fun...
 
My cornish crosses were left alone on purpose with the occasional check for "pasty butt" every couple days or so... They've turned out to love people though 'cause they bring food, of course.

My other chicks always got handled quite often after they got fluffy... Sometimes several times a day. They ended up being rather obnoxious... following the kids into the car when we tried to leave... absolutely terrible! ...but we like it that way!
 
Hi Neighbor. I am from dyersburg too.
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Quote:
 
I handle most of mine every day, but it's hard to know which ones I have already picked up since they all look exactly alike, except for Frito, who has two toes joined together as one. There is an exception...a little BOrpington, which was not handled hardly at all when she was a chick, but now she is so tame I can just reach down and pick her up. The secret was raw peanuts - I began to feed them to her and soon she was sitting beside me, then up on my leg, now I can just pick her up to put her in the henhouse. For a long time she ran away in fright, but the peanuts got her close enough and gentle hands tamed her completely.
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- If you whistle to a chicken it just stops doing whatever it is doing and stares at you. One of my chickens got so close to my mouth that I thought she was going to peck me - she never did - she just got up close to see where the whistling was coming from. They all love the tune 'Edelweiss'. All my chickens are 'flowers' to me.
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Since I wasn't sure I could give day old chicks treats I just popped my head in and talked to them for a few days until they were calm enough to reach in and pet them....I always talked until they saw me.

It seemed to work as now they will just hop into my hands or try to fly up to me:)
 

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