My chicks hatched on Friday. I have paper towels over the chips for now. I was just wondering if I can let them on the wood chips or will they still try to eat them??
I normally leave my chicks on the paper for about 6-7 days - I have heard of others removing it earlier....
Take the paper off an watch closely. Mine were poking at the shavings and spitting them out for about a day before they figured out that pine tastes bad. It was actually pretty funny
once my chicks dried off in the incubator last year i just put them straight onto the pine shavings. one of my friends who has raised hundreds of chickens turkeys geese and ducks in total was instructing me what to do and he didnt even bring up paper towels. ocasionally the chicks would peck at and maybe eat a few small pieces but no real problems arose. if you give them a better tasting alternative like hard boiled egg yolks made slightly pasty with a few drops of water then they will eat that instead of wood. they will figure out wood isnt food eventually
One of my first "mistakes" when starting with my chicks was to not put paper towels down over the bedding. By the time I thought about it they were two days old. As I was observing them I noticed that yes, some of them did pick up the flakes, but they spit em right back out. When I mentioned to my (former chicken farmer) SO that I needed to put paper towels down he looked at me as if I was crazy. In the end I never used the paper towels and my chicks did just fine. I don't know if the fact that I use large flake pine shavings made a difference or not, but I don't think so.
It wasn't until I joined this site that I ever heard of putting down paper towels. Had them down for 2 days with this batch, then removed them and all was well.