Benefit to buying chicks that are 2-3 weeks old?

[math ace]

I love getting chicks that are 3 - 4 weeks old. These guys are past the stupid drown themselves in the water dish age. They are past the drop dead from shipping trauma stage. They are past the didn't hatch right and die stage.

In general, these chicks are strong and healthy.

Some breeds can be sexed at hatching by color, some breeds can be sexed at the 3 - 4 week age because the roos develope combs much bigger and redder than the pullets at the same age.

I would stay away from Easter eggers if you want to decrease the possibility of opps sexing. Every order I have ever received has had at least one opps in it.

 

[write2caroline]

Younger chicks are super duper cute and you will be hypnotized in short order and will always want more.

older chicks are super duper cute and somewhat feathered out and will want to be out in the run and be so charming they will hypnotize you and make you wish you had not missed their tiny baby days and you will always want more.

Your sunk either way

Welcome to the addictive world of chickens!
Caroline

 

[write2caroline]

As far as taming them by getting them younger?

I don't think it really applies. I have had better luck with making friends with older chicks because I could feed them treats!

Face it - Treats are what it is all about and if you sit in amoungst them and offer them wormies or buggies or those grass seed thingys they will crowd around you and soon think you are the food person and be very excited to see you. I have 19 in one batch that the minute I walk out the door they flock over to say HEY WHAT DID JA BRING US??? Some will sit in my lap and some will just hang nearby. Some of my younger ones that I had since day 2 after hatching can care less if I am around.

Caroline

 

[gryeyes]

write2caroline put it exactly right. Adorable at any age.

With that being said, when I was/will be buying chicks at feed stores, I try to get those that are about 2 weeks old. My favorite feed store gets its chick shipments on Thursdays, I can never get there weekdays so I arrive on Saturday or Sunday, and TRY to pick out chicks (from bins labeled the breeds and "hens") from the PREVIOUS week's shipment. Not the little bitty fluff balls only 5 days old, but the ones that hadn't been sold from the last shipment before that week's shipment.

Because math ace has it right, too. These chicks have survived shipping, have survived being handled a lot, have developed some skill at fending for themselves in a trough of others just like them, are generally past the early "failure to thrive" syndrome of newly hatched chicks, all that. A bit of feathers appearing at the wing-tips, a little taller and more agile than the latest living cotton balls dumped into the same trough. Less time for you to be spent combating "pasty butt," too.

In my case, if there were no chicks remaining from an earlier shipment, then I just "had to settle" for the 4 or 5 day old chicks, if it was a breed I really, really wanted to add to my flock.

Even though I'm now using incubators to hatch shipped eggs (from breeders), I have still been subject to the call of the feed store chick. Ooooh - I never got there in time to buy Light Brahma or Black Jersey Giant chicks before they were all sold out - lookit! lookit! There are a few right there!

And the nice young man lets me choose exactly which chick(s) I want - he's commented on the "get 'em a bit older" tactic as being the smartest way to go. (It just so happens I trust the employees at my favorite feed store.)