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Every meal for chicks? Proportions? Just trying to get a feel for it - don't want to "displace" too much in the way of the feed that has other balanced stuff in it...
(Now I need to find a good kitten food that isn't too expensive...)
- Ant Farm
I get the cat food from Costco- 17 per bag and Sam's- I think, 12 per bag. They are very expensive elsewhere, that;s for sure...
Rough average I'd say about 4 cups of chick starter mash, wet this throughoutly- either like oatmeal you can just about shape with hands or just barely wet enough you cannot do that. Break one or two eggs over this and stir, feed this right away. I use cheap doggy pans from the dollar store, but the problem is... when they see me coming with those pans they become VERY excited and makes walking into their pen to set them down impossible. some will be so excited they fly up onto you before it is set down. This extreme excitement is why it should be wet enough to go down easily and avoid choking. simply breaking eggs over the dry mash would work fine but needs more eggs to wet it enough, the water is a shortcut for this issue.
I was doing this either every other day with some stretches of several days in a row. I think it would be fine if it was three times a week or less, just had to deal with severe feather pickers in the batches this year(the EE chicks).
by the way this is not sole feed for chicks- they have dry feed available all the time.
If the chicks show no signs of feather picking I'd say it is not absolutely necessary. My main impetus really were those horrible EE chicks. After those were gone, the egg-feed continued mainly to help them recover and regrow feathers but continued to do it just because, after they recovered(and am now of the opinion they do need animal protein...)
Thanks - this is VERY helpful! I think I may try this intermittently with the new chicks (mine and the S&G strain NNs). The growth curves may be affected by comparison, but that's ok.
- Ant Farm
