grinding chick starter

[onthespot]

I started putting Start N' Grow in the blender for chick's first meal after hatching and have found that they seem to eat a LOT more and grow quicker if I keep offering the ground up feed. When offered freely along with unblenderized feed, the ground feed seems to get polished of about three times as fast as the crumbles. Anyone else do this or notice a difference. I don't enjoy the chore of blending their food, but it only takes a couple minutes and since I am brooding chicks heading into the winter, the sooner they put on weight and grow in their feathers, the better for me. The birds I have are copper black marans and bantam cochins.

 

[kstaven]

We grind down feed for chicks here also. The only difference is that we mix it with RAW MILK or whey from cheese making. It made a huge difference when we did this with our Cornish x meat birds.

BTW: Do Not attempt to do the mix with Pasteurized milk.

 

[2manyhats]

I especially grind the starter when dealing with bantams. Sometimes the starter chunks are just too big for their little mouths. It's a pain, but worth the time. I make up gallon batches when I do it.

 

[MissPrissy]

It depends on the chicks size for me. If they are tiny I grind it and mix it with yogurt or raw milk or even whey when I make cheese.

 

[flakey chick]

Finer is definately better for bantams. I has a small batch of TSC chick food and some of the pieces were too big for my tiny girls. They didn't digest it well and ate a lot of it. It didn't look much different coming out than going in. It still smelled like chicken feed. I switched to a finer ground and they ate less, but seemed to like it better. It started smelling like chicken poop.