how do you keep your chicks feet clean from poop?

[RonC]

Read an article that recomends 1-2 sq ft per chick till a month old in the brooder. I used about 4 inches of pine shavings in my brooder. I had an outside play area for them and would stir the shavings and do my maintaince(filling feed/water and cleaning) on the brooder while they were outside. My six had 8 sq ft of brooder. At one month they had outgrown it and moved to the coop/run.

 

[Bantie Barb]

I was looking for a way to keep poop off my turkey poults when I found your question. I am very interested to see if you figured it out. I have fine wood shavings. I have to clean their feet and today I put the fines from a bale of alfalfa hay to see if that will help. My brooder is a 50 gal water tank for 15 turkey poults one week old..

 

[K0k0shka]

Try sand. I read that a lot of people are happy with sand in the brooder as bedding, so I decided to try it. My chicks are 4 days old and the amount of poop has really gone up. I have paper towels on top of sand, because they were eating the sand in the early days, but now I'm starting to transition them off the paper towels. The sand seems to be working better, because the poop sort of gets buried in the sand as they walk and push it down with their feet. So there's less accumulating on the surface. I got a reptile poop scoop (smaller holes, so the small poops don't fall through) and it's really easy to scoop. Their feet are clean. There's less mess overall and it's easier and faster to clean. And less wasteful. Paper towels are hard to find these days so I don't want to waste them on chickens.

 

[rc4u]

straw ,,they like to scratch in it more n better if they woulfd eat some

 

[Bantie Barb]

Thank you I will try sand. I have used sand before with guineas. The alfalfa seemed to help some and they enjoyed eating the small leaves.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I only had 16 chicks but I put puppy pee pads in the bottom and then put pine chips on top of that. I changed it daily. I didn't really handle the chicks a lot so maybe I just didn't notice poopy feet, but they did scratch at the shavings a lot, so maybe that would help keep their feet clean?

 

[Bantie Barb]

Do turkeys scratch like chickens do?
I ordered 20 and have lost 5 already. I only raised turkeys once and that was with guineas so not exactly sure the difference in raising turkeys and chickens.