My chicks are on a diet ... they won't eat treats!

[RavenStorm]

Hey peoples, my one month-old chicks refuse to eat any treats I give them. Yogurt? It's scary. Cantaloupe? It might bite. Anything green that I might bring to their brooder (although I did move them out to the run yesterday) is avoided like the plague. They are afraid of nearly everything it seems, and only one brave soul ever made a single peck at any of these goodies before running away to tell the others not to touch it. I want them to have a varied and nutritional diet but I can't free-range them because of a large cat and predator population and my backyard is completely concrete.

How can I convince them that there is more to life than their feed?

 

[sussexgal]

Without Mums to show them it's okay, they are timid at trying new foods.... I'm thinking my babies were over 2 months before they would pick at other edibles. Perhaps you could try things that look close to their regular feed? Crumble up a cake donut... mine got more adventurous when they associated me with something yummy.... so keep trying - they will get it and eventually devour your offerings with ernest

 

[mjolly]

Try some spaghetti noodles! I fed these to the younger chicks and they thought they were worms and couldn't get enough. At 1 month, you could also try some smaller meal worms. Introduce them to "live" food. That won't take long for them to devour!

Good luck!

Marva

 

[JennsPeeps]

Put out a bowl of yogurt and put a thin layer of crumbles over the top. They'll go for the crumbles and get a beakful of the yogurt at the same time.

It might also be the container the things are being presented in. Once you've gotten them accustomed to a certain container, use that same one over and over. Using a familiar food to introduce a new one is a good method.

My girls are nearly 5 months old and still are tentative about new things. When I introduced watermelon they only wanted the pieces I scooped out and gave them by hand (spoiled!!). Eventually they figured it out and they left only the watermelon skin after a couple of days!

I've found that my girls are more likely to try new foods if I hand feed it to them first.

Yes... terribly spoiled, I know!

 

[RavenStorm]

I don't know why, but now all of a sudden they love new foods! I put in a tomato (maybe it was the red color) that had split from my garden in on a little tray, went inside to wash my hands, and came back out and that sucker was gone! They had less than 3 minutes alone with it, and there are only 6 on them and this veggie was huge! So now they sort of associate that tray with tasty things other than their normal food so I just drop things on there. I gave them the stalks from brocoli (normally I'd peel that and cook it for the family to eat because we don't like to waste and it's yummy, but this time they were too old and hard) and likewise they were gone pretty quickly. I tried giving them yogurt (plain) but every time they dipped their beak they would rapidly shake their heads and fling it everywhere instead of eating it.