feediing young chcks

[5056margaret]

I have young chicks,can i feed them turkey grower or will it harm them?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

A high protein game bird grower is what I usually start them on. Somewhere around 22-24%.
There's nothing in it that will hurt them.
What is the protein percentage?

 

[Ridgerunner]

You need to look at the label on the bag to see the analysis. There are basically two things to look at, percent calcium and percent protein.

Calcium won’t be a problem for you with turkey grower but I’ll mention it anyway. If the calcium content is somewhere around 3.5% to 4.5%, that feed is meant for poultry that is laying eggs. The extra calcium is for their egg shells. Feed with calcium in this range should not be fed to growing chicks. It can harm their internal organs.

What you should see is calcium somewhere in the general range of 1%. It won’t be exactly 1%, just somewhere in that range and not around 4%. That’s plenty of calcium to grow their skeleton without harming them.

I don’t know what the percent protein is on your specific turkey grower. I’d guess somewhere around 20% to 22%. This kind of stuff does vary between brands but that’s not a big deal. You have a wide range of feeds you can feed chicks and they’ll do fine.

I’m assuming you are raising the chicks to be part of a laying flock, not raising meat birds. There are some differences in how you should feed the meat birds. With chicks that will be part of a laying flock, the general idea is to feed them a fairly high protein feed the first 4 to 8 weeks to get them off to a good start, then switch to a lower protein feed for them to grow to maturity, which is when they start to lay. They don’t need a higher protein feed during this grow period and the grower feed is less expensive than the higher protein starter. If you wish to waste the extra money for the higher protein feed, that’s your business. It won’t hurt them.

I’ve fed 24% protein gamebird starter when I hatched turkeys and chicks together. Around 5 weeks I changed to a 20% protein combined starter/grower and raised them on that. The chicken chicks were fine and grew real fast.

My more normal for chickens is to feed them the 20% combined starter/grower until they are around 8 to 10 weeks, then switch to a 15% finisher/developer. A lot of why I do it this way is because of the feeds available to me.

A normal progression if the feeds are available is to feed them a starter maybe 20% to 22% protein the first 4 to 8 weeks. It really doesn’t matter if it is 4 weeks or 8 weeks, just switch whenever that bag of feed runs out. Then switch to a 16% to 18% grower until they start to lay or maybe 20 weeks, whichever happens first. Then when you see the first egg, switch to a 16% to 18% protein layer or just keep feeding the grower and offer oyster shells on the side.

You have a tremendous range of what you can feed them without harming them. The only real rule is to watch out for the extra calcium until they start to lay. It may sound complicated but it’s really not. Practically anything works.

Good luck!

 

[5056margaret]

THANKS SO MUCH>VERY HELPFUL