i have two 2 month old jungle fowls and i bought them the chick starter...and i just found out that they should be fed with chick starter until they are about 6 weeks old. What are my options?
Well red junglefowl might be different but you're supposed to feed chicks chick crumble until laying age.
As far as I know, Jungle Fowl are chickens. I have not raised Jungle Fowl so maybe I am of base with that basic assumption? You have a lot of options. In my opinion, people get a whole lot more hung up on feed than they need to. First, is it medicated? It really doesn't matter. I'm only asking to get that out of the way first. To keep from going into detail, in my opinion, feeding them medicated feed is not required unless you have a history that shows you have a need for it. Many of us don't feed medicated feed to chicks or chickens at all. But there is nothing in medicated feed that will hurt them. There is some opinion that you should not eat the egs if you are feeding laying hens medicated feed, but at 2 months your are not laying. It is a non-issue for most of us. So don't worry about that part. There is a certain general progression recommended for feeding the chicks; Starter, then Grower, then Layer. This is set up with the commercial chicken industry in mind. When you have thousands of chicks in the coop and you are depending on those chickens laying eggs to feed, cloth, and house your family, you want to be as efficient as you can. Cost of the feed is a big factor, so you don't spend any more than you have to on the feed, but health is also a big consideration. The age and size eggs those specially bred laying hens lay when they start is important. There is a reason for those recommendations for the commercial industry. But you will find a whole lot of people on this forum don't follow those recommendations really closely and their chickens do fine. Since you are asking, I'm assuming you are not raising thousands of chicks in a commercial enterprise or you would not be asking on this forum. The main difference in chick Starter and Chick Grower is the percent protein. Starter will have maybe 20% to 24% protein and Grower will have around 16%. Any other differences are really minor. The main difference in Grower and Layer is percent Calcium. It does not matter if it is mash, crumbles, or pellets. The nutrient content is the same. The different sizes are set up for different automated feeder systems. The basic concept is that you feed the high percentage Starter for the first 4 to 8 weeks when they are feathering out to help them get a good start. Then you switch to a less expensive feed lower in protein because they don't need the extra protein. The extra protein won't hurt them unless you get kind of ridiculous about it and give them a whole lot. Then, when they start laying, you switch to a high calcium Layer so they have the extra calcium they need for the egg shells. Many of us feed a combined 20% Starter/Grower fromn Day 1 until we switch to Layer. There is a 15% Grower/Developer you can switch to after 13 weeks or so. There is a wide range of feeds that they do well on. Where I think people get hung up is that they see the recommendations based on the efficiency of commercial operations and think they have to follow those. I kind of generally try to follow those, but if I can't get the 15% Grower/Developer when they hit 13 weeks, I'll get a 20% Flock Raiser or 20% Starter/Grower and use that. It's not a big deal. I think one option you have is to continue to feed the Starter until the bag runs out, then switch to Grower. The higher protein won't hurt them. It's not high enough. Another option is to get a bag of Grower and mix the two. This will bring the average protein down some. It won't hurt in the least. I also don't think you need to, but you can if you want to.
If you are referring to the "Jungle fowl" that you get from a hatchery you can feed them as you would any other chicken. Chris
