day olds not eating as well as I expected

[zilenacha]

Hi. Well, we just hatched our first chicks. 6/10 hatched (bantams). I am feeding them something I got from Murray McMurray, Chick-a-Go 20 Starter-Developer. It's little pellets. I've given it in a dish and spread it about the brooder, but nobody is wild about it. I cooked them up some egg and they went bonkers for it! Am I supposed to be soaking the starter in water for them or something? Can day old chicks really just eat those little pellets?

Otherwise they are great, except for 1 troublemaker, the firstborn. He's always shoving everybody around!

 

[Poison Ivy]

Not sure how big the pellets are but even some of the chick crumbles are to big for them to eat. You could just put it in a food processor and chop it up smaller or put some in a baggie and hit it with a hammer to crumble it up. I do that with the food for the button quail I hatched out.

 

[silkiechicken]

The baby chicks wont eat much for the first 24-48 hours of life. They are learning to stand and see pretty much. They have enough yolk reserves to last 3 days.

 

[zilenacha]

TY.Yes, they are learning to stand and it's hilarious!

I may try taking out my aggressions on a ziploc bag of their pellets with a meat tenderizer though. I see they pick the little bits up but often can't seem to get them down.

 

[ruth]

I don't think they can eat pellets. I buy the kind that's almost a powder or the smallest crumb size. Even my egg layers won't eat the pellets unless I soak them. I also feed mine scrambled egg from hatch day till they are a few weeks old - good source of protein and all vitamins - just like that yolk sac they absorb. Mine have a little shark feeding frenzy if I start dropping tiny bits of scrambled egg in their box - it's every chick for itself.

So that the pellets don't go to waste, you can soak them - doesn't take much but a little misting and they disintegrate. I found that trying to smash them or put them in blender was just a lot of work.