At what age can I start feeding my chicks table scraps?

[peachydarling]

Hello,
We have just acquired our first batch of chicks. We plan on feeding them safe kitchen leftovers and letting them free range while supervised once they go outside. They are currently one week old. When do you recommend I start adding scraps to their chick crumbles? I gave them a boiled, mashed egg today already.
Thanks so much!

 

[chooks4life]

Greetings and

I'm not sure what you mean by 'safe' kitchen leftovers. (Cooked? Or just not stuff like onion peels etc?)

Generally though anytime from now onwards should be fine, depending on what you give them, but I'd supervise them. If they've never dealt with anything they can choke on, there will be a learning curve on how to handle it.

Also anything that has human saliva on it is probably best avoided, at least until they're older and have been free ranging and have developed their gut fauna and flora more; they can and do get gastrointestinal illness from cross-contamination with bacteria etc that humans commonly carry or are exposed to, particularly via raw supermarket produce, grapes, meats, etc.

Best wishes.

 

[SunkenRoadFarms]

Make sure you offer grit at the same time. Also, scraps shouldn't be mixed in with feed, it will cause massive waste as they beak through the feed for the scraps.

 

[tasha-kitty]

Mine have been enjoyng weeds more than kitchen scraps. I am a new chick mom with 4 babies about 12days old. I gave them some lettuce at about a week which they loved and devoured, spinach the next day. They ate it but not right away. then pulled some miner's lettuce out of the yard with some roots and dirt attached & they all acted like they had died & gone to heaven, jumping on them, nibbling the roots. I have been giving then some fresh weeds every day.
But I do wonder how much of the fresh stuff it is ok for them to eat?

 

[chooks4life]

But I do wonder how much of the fresh stuff it is ok for them to eat?

Well, in my experience chooks if given a chance will balance their diet with a fair bit of greens, sufficient to their needs. But that does involve them learning how much they need, to begin with. During this learning period they often overdo it.

Some chooks when first introduced to greens or vegetation (or scraps or any number of other things too) will make bad dietary choices and overdo it on one thing at the expense of another; this is generally not because they view it as a 'treat' or are prone to junk food binges as some people say, but because there is actually an underlying deficiency the item they're choosing helps address, or at least gives them the empty promise of addressing.

So-called 'complete' foods are not truly nutritionally complete at all, they are only sufficient to keep them alive for a limited period of time, and many chooks live in a permanent state of malnutrition because of that. It has a major impact on longevity and health.

Gorging on greens or any other specific part of the diet in exclusion of other things can of course potentially imbalance the diet until the animal is running short on other nutrients. A short term deficiency in otherwise healthy animals is normal enough and will balance out without serious harm done, once they get sufficient experience to learn what they need, when, and how much of it.

Given time and exposure to the necessary provisions to facilitate learning, they should balance their own diets properly, however many people take this decision out of their hands and restrict them to crumble or pellets or 'complete' feeds only to try to avoid potential malnutrition issues.

If they're commercial layer or meat breeds they can struggle to cope on different diets than what is formulated for them, since the breed's been developed in conjunction with the feeds they're supposed to live on. Such birds are the ones most likely to suffer issues with too much supplementation of the diet.

If you don't free range them and always keep their greens limited to what you supply, they will tend to overdose more, since they get a bit desperate for them if they go long periods without them. Long periods to them can be 6 or so hours of waiting for you to supply the day's greens, lol. Not actually long periods.

If they free range chances are they will be quite blase about greens and only eat as much as they need rather than gorge because it's something they crave but can only access in irregular and limited quantity.

Best wishes.