Food for de-beaked chickens

I have 5 de-beaked birds (in addition to 12 "regular" birds). The de-beaked ones are at a disadvantage with food (I would compare it to a person trying to pick up small objects after having half of each finger lopped off) because they just don't have the fine motor skills to pick up and hold small objects. On alot of the de-beaked chickens, the tips of their beak don't even come together so there is a hole, and on some of them their tongue is left hanging out. What works best for the de-beaked girls is to put the food in deeper containers where the food is more "concentrated" rather than spread out. Just time and practice will help as well... they've spent their entire lives picking crumbles out of a conveyor belt and new foods like tomatoes and such will take some practice. Try chopping the fruits/veggies into smaller pieces and placing into a deep bowl, then once they figure out how to pick those up and that they're good to eat, you can progress on to bigger, more spread out things. They will eventually get the hang of it.

Wanted to add also, is the reason they do better with small pieces is that a regular chicken shakes and tears it's food into pieces it can swallow, but when the de-beaked hen tries this the food usually goes flying. Try feeding your de-beaked girls by hand and you'll see the mechanics involved.

THANK YOU! Yes, the CHURP lady told me to use a deep bowl for their food. They do seem to do better with the crumbles than the pellets, maybe the crumbles have more edges they can hold onto. Strangely, they love pecking on the ground for bugs and scratch. I think they are getting better with practice. I will try feeding them by hand so I understand what they are working with better, and cutting their treats smaller.
 

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