5 day old chicks eating shavings

[GwenFarms]

While your out take a look at the corn cob bedding..honestly. Its not dusty and they don't eat it. Its easy to keep clean and not really anymore expensive. Just have a look at it and see if you don't like the looks of it.

 

[Moselle]

Yes, it drove me nuts at first. Mine are 12 days old now. I put paper towels on top of the pine shavings, but one of the more clever chicks immediately figured out how to pull the paper towel back to get to the shavings. After a week, I only put paper towels under their food and water, hoping it would help keep them cleaner, but now the chicks kick the bedding over those paper towels too.

As far as I can tell, they are just digging down to get the little dusty bits. I started putting chick grit into their feed because of the wood-eating and because we also feed them some oatmeal as a treat once in a while. So far, everyone seems to be healthy.

 

[Henrietta23]

I used to work in a pet store and we used it in the bird cages. I can only find enormous bags of it so I'm hestitant to buy it. I tried again and they are still pulling shavings out from under the paper towels. The silkie has found that food tastes much better. The other two are still fighting over the big pieces and eating the littler ones. I'll give it a few more minutes and if they don't knock it off I'm taking the shavings out again. I did find some that was a little bigger but they're still going for it. I spread some of their food on the towels hoping they'd scratch around in that and they are but the two are still being very silly.

 

[Henrietta23]

Took the shavings back out. I put a few of the larger pieces of shavings back in for them to play with. They are sleeping.

 

[mhoward92]

Here is what i did. and my chicks know the difference of their food and shavings.

= Take your pine shavings or whatever you use. and put it on one half of your box (the opposite side of your light) then lay newspapers or papertowels down on the other side were their food and water is. they go to the heat and their food and they learn the difference of food and bedding pretty fast. plus thats were mine seem to poop the most and it makes cleaning MUCH easier

 

[Henrietta23]

Thanks! Worth thinking about. It isn't a large box with only the three of them in there. I'm going to let them get used to these few big pieces first and see what happens next.

 

[seminolewind]

Are you sure they are eating their chick feed? Sometimes they just can't handle the crumbles. Make a wet mash and make sure they know its good, maybe that will solve it.
Karen

 

[Henrietta23]

Quote:
Excellent question, but yes they definitely are. I have to process it a bit to make it smaller but they had been eating well for almost a week before I tried putting the shavings in there. In fact they are little piggies! Olive, the biggest, has doubled her weight since being a day old chick. I weigh them on my old Weight Watchers scale in a little basket. Silly I know, but fun to see that they've really grown!

 

[Henrietta23]

Okay, trying again. I got chick grit and they are paper towels on top of shavings. They pulled a lot of the shavings from under the sides of the paper. Still ate some of the smaller pieces. I just left it as is. They're a lot bigger than they were a few days ago when I first tried the shavings. I watched them eat some of the grit so I'm going to just hope that they'll be okay. They're starting to peck at the paper towels and little chunks are missing so I'm not sure which is worse! I'll be home all day tomorrow with a sick son. Not that I'll be able to do much if anything is wrong with the chicks but at least I won't be at work worrying and unable to check on them.

 

[palabeco]

why not use shredded newspaper?
we used it for 2 week old chicks and didn't seem to have any problems, and as they got bigger, we made the strips of paper wider.