Feeding Baby Chicks 'treats'

[Koston]

So, I've been feeding my babies medicated chick feed. I have 4 baby Silkies, 2 are 1.5 months old, the other two are one month old. I have been feeding them cut up veggies and other stuff though as well. I was wondering how often I should feed these 'special' foods to them. They go crazy for watermelon, corn, cucumber, carrots, apples. Stuff like that. I hand feed them some of it everyday to get them used to my hand. Is it okay to feed them that stuff everyday or is just a special once a week kinda thing?

 

[LibertyChick]

So, I've been feeding my babies medicated chick feed. I have 4 baby Silkies, 2 are 1.5 months old, the other two are one month old. I have been feeding them cut up veggies and other stuff though as well. I was wondering how often I should feed these 'special' foods to them. They go crazy for watermelon, corn, cucumber, carrots, apples. Stuff like that. I hand feed them some of it everyday to get them used to my hand. Is it okay to feed them that stuff everyday or is just a special once a week kinda thing?

Hi,

I would like like to say you need to be very, very, very careful about giving them "treats." I'm actually having trouble getting my chickens to eat whey they are supposed to eat because I've had to supplement so much due to the feed being nutritionally deficient. I feed organic, never given them any vaccines or medicated feed and they have been healthy. But recently due the the feed being deficient (the manufacturer decided to change the formula and I kept feeding the same feed instead of changing to a different organic feed. So, I have been trying to supplement to keep my chickens healthy and now they don't want to eat grass or weeds or dry chicken feed. I don't know if I can ever get them to eat what they are supposed to eat again. They have learned a very bad habit and I can't seem to unlearn it. They are also now very lazy and lay around a lot in the yard and hardly ever dig in the grass for bugs or worms or eat the grass, dandelions, plaintains or other weeds. I don't know what to do with mine. They aren't exactly laying a lot of eggs either. So they are eating layer feed in a mash, raw milk kefir and some table scraps I can get them to eat. Otherwise, they won't eat anything and have empty crops almost all the time. About 2 of them do a semi good job of eating some things as they have small crops, but the others have empty crops. They have lots of weeds and grass in the yard to eat but they are choosing to starve. Not a good situation.

I hope this helps. It's probably the worst case scenario. So, I would say if you are going to give them treats like that, which are very good for them, give them in very small quantities and infrequently.

LibertyChick

 

[SobbaChickens]

I'd go with a few times a week. Or if you really really want to give them treats everyday only give them a tiny bit per bird. Between 4wks - 7wks I'd say I probably gave my girls treats every day and I never noticed them not eating their real food. But I didn't give them very much. Now (they are currently around 11wks) they are rarely getting treats, just because I got lazy about it.

Edit to add: I started my girls on medicated feed, once that bag was finished I moved them to Nutrena Naturewise Chick Starter/Grower