Can 5-6 week old chicks drink electrolytes and probiotics in the same water?

[truebluewhitingowner]

Hi! I am new to this community and chicken caring and was wondering about water. Can I mix a pack of electrolytes (the sav-a-chik) variety as well as around 10 grams of probiotics? I want them healthy as possible without overdoing it. Thanks in advance for answering my question regarding this.

 

[3KillerBs]

Welcome to BYC. If you put your general location into your profile people can give better-targeted advice. Climate matters.

IIRC, Save-A-Chick also makes a probiotic. Perhaps their website would have some information?

I never give electrolytes more than once a week and I ALWAYS offer plain water in a separate waterer. Imagine having nothing to drink but Gatorade in a flavor you don't like.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, welcome from Louisiana, glad you joined.

For questions like that my suggestion is usually to contact the manufacturer and see what they say. They know more about their product than I do.

Personally I do not give my chicks either purchased probiotics or electrolyes as a matter of course. If a chick is weak and looks like it needs help I use a medicine dropper and put a drop of hummingbird liquid on the tip of its beak so it can swallow it without drowning. I repeat that as long as it swallows it. Some people use sugar water and a lot do buy electrolytes but the hummingbird liquid provides energy for it plus liquid to keep it dehydrated. Some people do supplement the water with something but my go to is simply clean water. If you supplement I suggest you read the instructions for what you are using and follow that, both in frequency and dosage. I'd be reluctant to blindly mix them.

The way I try to raise mine to be healthy is to keep the brooder dry and see that they get a healthy balanced diet. I take some dirt from the run and start feeding that to them every three days or so, starting on the second day in the brooder. That dirt is from where the adult chickens are. This gets them any probiotics the adults wish to share, gets grit in their system, and starts them working in any flock immunities they may need to work on. Since you don't have any adults they can't get any probiotics from this but they can get grit and your soil might contain something they could work on for immunity.

Instead of using chemicals my approach is to naturally strengthen their immune system and prepare them for the environment they will see. I think I raise stronger healthier chicks that way but a lot of people will disagree with me and use all kinds of products.