6 week old chicks, now what do they eat???

[chick_newbie]

My little chicks are 6 weeks old and running low on their chick starter and now I am wondering if it is time to change their food. Can they start to have scraps too? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[MissPrissy]

They need to stay on chick starter/grower. They are in the height of their growing and need the caloric intake of the starter to build their more adult frame of bone and muscle mass. If you can get it Purina Mills Starter/Grower sunfresh in the red bag is the best feed I have found. They can stay on it until you see an egg and then switch to layer ration.

You can also give them plenty of fresh grass, yogurt, meat and veggie scraps now, too.

 

[LynneP]

Mine are 6.5 weeks and still on starter crumbles. Next week I'm going to start to mix some grower ration into it. Nice looking birds. Tjis is how mine are a week later-

 

[fowlafoot]

Here is a great site for what to feed at what ages and what you can supplement with

 

[chick_newbie]

Thanks for your help. We gave them some vegetable scraps and they loved it.

 

[LynneP]

As Miss Prissy has alluded, it also depends on which feed system you're using. We're going with the Atlantic Co-op system. The feeds contain grit/oyster as required and we use`starter for 6 weeks, switch gradually to grower then to layer at about 16 weeks. The Purina system has its method...choose something suitable and stick with it! The district foodmaster for poultry is in our community, we're lucky!