Is turkey prestarter/starter okay for 6 week old pullet chicks?

[Clucktagious]

Our feedstore was out of the Purina brand chick starter today, and in fact had no actual chick starter. The guy there, who I believe knows his stuff pretty well, sold me Kalmback turkey prestarter/starter. It has 28% protein, 3% fat, and 4% crude fiber. He seemed to think it was actually better for the chicks than actual chick-starter and said that alot of folks raising for 4-H use it, but I am guessing those folks are going for fast growth. I want to insure proper development for my layers.

 

[bt03]

Turkey starters are usually really high in protein because turkeys tend to grow pretty fast. If you are wanting it for say cornish x meat birds and want to cull quickly then a turkey starter is actually better because of the niacin that is good for leg growth (if that feed has a good amount) for larger breeds like cornish x, turkeys and ducks. Our ducklings get a 24% protein feed and chick get 18% protein feed as babies, but then again ducks grow much faster than chickens. If you are wanting them to grow at a slower rate (like layers should) then you will want to wait for their regular feed to come in.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Never heard it called "prestarter" but standard 28% protein gamebird starter is OK for chicken chicks for brief periods. I often hatch some chicks along with my poults and they all get the same feed for a while.