Need help with grit

[kerroppi76]

Hello, I have a bunch of baby chicks (5 are 3 weeks old and 3 are 2 weeks old) when should I start giving them grit and how do I feed it to them? (mix it in their feed?) Thanks for the help!

 

[ruffedgrouse]

i have been mixing the grit in with their feed since they were 2 weeks old. No problems now and they are 8 weeks old.

 

[DanEP]

You don't need to feed the chicks grit as long as their only eating chick starter only when you want to start giving them treats. That being said two weeks seems like a good time to start with treats so that they grow up thinking of you as a food source, this will make them follow you anywhere and com a runnin from a long way off. I just give chicks accsess to construction sand and .let them take what they need their a lot smarter about it then we are. It also gives them a place to take dust baths

 

[turbodog]

Quote:
I never gave my little ones enough to take dust baths in but everything else DanEP said above is spot on for what I did. I just put some sand in a shallow container and the chicks quickly ate it up like food.
Then I gave em grasshoppers.

 

[kerroppi76]

Quote:
I never gave my little ones enough to take dust baths in but everything else DanEP said above is spot on for what I did. I just put some sand in a shallow container and the chicks quickly ate it up like food.
Then I gave em grasshoppers.

At what age did u give them grasshopers? Did you start the sand/grit the same time you started treats or a little time before? Thanks so much everyone for the advice!

 

[florida lee]

I started mine on grit at about 4 or 5 weeks......just used grit for chicks (found it at a local independent feed store). its much smaller than chicken grit. I used regular chicken grit first...just smashed it up finer with a hammer until I found the chick grit. put it in a separate small chick feed container. They helped themselves when ever they wanted it. have had no problems.

 

[Mrs. Fluffy Puffy]

I don't feed my chicks grit. Bu the time they're a week old they're outside pecking around the yard eating their own grit. Same goes for my older chickens, they free range and I'm sure they pick up all the grit they need.

~ Aspen

 

[BoltonChicken]

The prior poster hit the nail on the head. If the chicks have access to dirt/sand/gravel they will pick out their own correctly sized grit for their little gizzards. It is amazing to me, but for thousands of years chickens got along just fine without us taking care of them. Wonder how they managed.

 

[WhySayWhat]

My "chicks" are now 18 weeks old, but I have been giving them chick grit since they were 3-5 weeks old (I forget when I started), that's when they started getting "treats" of hard-boiled egg yolk, I moved them up to BOSS and Meal worms around 8 weeks. I have a small child's sandbox in my run for the girls to dust bathe in ($30 and shaped like a cute little turtle...designed for babies and holds 150 lbs of sand if filled to the brim), and they have a smallish pile of the chick grit (almost out of the chick grit, will be moving them up to the chicken sized stuff) on the ground. The run also has a dirt floor under the river rock that was previously put everywhere in my yard (I hate the stuff) that they dig around in all the time.

Oddly enough, they eat the sand most often to use as grit! I see them eat the dirt and they do an excellent job of tossing the grit around under their feeder (where I put the pile), but they go over to the sand box and grab a mouthful before breakfast every morning! It's funny to watch, they used to "sneak" it, but now they just walk over and act like they're getting a drink of water in the sand, lol.

 

[turbodog]

Quote:
We started giving them treats at two weeks and yes, started giving them grit (sand) at the same time.

My wife got a kick out of watching me run around the yard catching small grasshoppers for the chicks. When she saw how funny they were with a bug, she started catching them too.