Chicken too thin!

[LindaB220]

I am curious, too, about how to know if your chicks are too thin and/or getting enough to eat. All my 23 11-week old chicks act healthy, but I notice that the lower ranking chicks don't even attempt to eat until the New Hampshires and brown leghorns have left the coop. If they approach the feeder when everyone else is first eating, they get chased off, mainly by the leghorns - though I have 4 little feeders so the low-ranked sometimes gather around one of them - but 1 or 2 seem discouraged enough to just stay back. But, all the chicks have prominent breast bones and feel skinny to me when I pick them up. I figured they are just growing, and this must be normal. The one thing that has concerned me is that I see a fair number of feathers in the coop - these are my first chicks- and I don't understand why they would be losing feathers at this age, unless maybe there is a nutrition problem. They eat chick starter (20-21% protein) - measured quantity, but they never clean up the dry feeder completely - and they have free range access to ungrazed pasture land most days.

My 15 chicks are 12 weeks old tomorrow and the coop is sprinkled with a lot of white feathers. So I know it is coming from all of them. A small molt maybe?

 

[Den in Penn]

One of three juvenile molts they go through. Think of if as new clothes for the kids that have out grown their still serviceable old ones.

 

[Sabz]

Thanks for all the info Donrae.

Your comments about wine made me smile. Do you know how I selected wine when I started drinking it? I took bottles with animals, LOL. Just because they were cute, haha.

That broth must be delicious. When I will slaughter mine, I think I will cook all the "leftovers" to get a broth - like the neck, etc. Then I will feed those to the dogs Double usage!

 

[debp]

Oh, good to know. Thanks so much for the information on adolescent molts. Makes sense that they can't fit adult-sized feathers on half-sized bodies.

 

[donrae]

I love your avatar! Those are beautiful dogs

My dogs in the pic are BBDDs...Big Black Dumb Dogs, so christened by my youngest son. Just big ol black mixed breed dogs, probably with a high portion of lab in them, but lots of something else, too. The back one (Blaze) is gone now, so we have Roscoe to patrol the property. He does a great job keeping predators away, thankfully!

We now also have a purely ornamental dog, Eve. She's a partially deaf Great Dane puppy who really thinks the world is best observed from the sofa,preferable snuggled in a puppy pile with a boy or two!


She does venture out with me to the chicken area and hay barn....





Pictures were when she was 6ish months old, she's really grown and filled out since then.