New chick raisers - ideas for taming, enriching, enjoying them? [PICS included as a thanks in advanc

[Clumber]

Hi all,

With our new home out more in the sticks (YAY!) we decided as part of our longterm goal of getting closer to the things we consume and increasing our self-sufficiency; we bought some chicks. This after we absolutely startled ourselves with 3 years in a row of being very successful vegetable gardeners! No one was more surprised than we were that we can grow food! Chicks will be 3 weeks old tomorrow or Friday. We are newbies to birds, but very experienced with other critters. So this is an awesome experiment as we are learning so much totally new stuff! It's like raising little dinosaurs!

I would love some ideas on good ways to tame the chicks, and help them grow up to be calm and happy. Not to the degree of pets, per se, but at least of very friendly acquaintances... if that makes sense.

Possibly important or not info : We have 10 chicks, 5 each of RIR and Barred Rocks. We want to end up with 4-5 hens, so we purchased 2x our goal as straight-run from a very nice poultry auction out here, and we hand-picked out ours from about 15 of each breed. Roosters appearing will either be sold or, if they are large enough, eaten. (We can't have roosters in this county, and I personally can get very grumpy at critters that repeatedly kill my sleep LOL, so even if roos were legal to we probably wouldn't keep them, at least not in our current property.) Chicks are living in our spare room right now, but as soon as they can manage temperature on their own they will have a bran new coop i am building for them in our bran-new poultry area of our yard, safe from our dogs and, presumably, most wildlife chicken connoisseurs. We want chickens for eggs, meat, bug stalkers, kitchen scraps devourers, and compost creators. Oh and entertainment, obviously.

Currently we have them swarming our hands when we call "ChickChickChick" with mealworms, and they are happy to sit on my shoulder or my lap and will often fall asleep on me, or even preen themselves (and me) when we are sitting with them. They don't freak out when we move the top of the brooder (rubbermaid container, LOL) anymore. Most of the 10 love to have their chests stroked, and all 10 are growing well - 1 is a bit smaller, but seems to be just as healthy, just smaller. When I put my hand in the brooder, almost immediately 2 or 3 of them will leap/fly/fall into my palm to be picked up. So I think our gut instincts for integrating them into our lives happily are fairly good. We recently moved them to a larger container, and not a one of them stressed about it. At all.

Every couple of days we give them something novel to stare at in utter distrust, such as crushed quail eggshells, a couple cherries, a spinach leaf, a new mini-perch ladder I made for them, and so on. What else do you like to give to your chicks to entertain and confuse them? What sort of other things are safe to let them try eating? Can we, for example, give them an earthworm? Would a small mirror be entertaining for them? Cuttle bone? When you offer a dust bath container, what do you use for the "dust"? Sand? When can we safely let them outside to scratch the planet and such? (supervised and safe, of course. Do we need to keep them indoors under the heat lamp until they can move to the coop, or are short forays into the outdoors okay? We're in a heatwave, for here anyhow, lately so outdoor temps are around 75-85. Sunday we will take their heat lamp temp down another 5° to 80° or so. We have a half-circle cage we can put them in for outside time, whenever that is safe to do.) Any other warnings or suggestions?

MUCH thanks in advance and here's a couple pics we took last night, since I know everyone loves baby photos!








~Tracy in the green half of Washington State

 

[modchicken]

To cute and so exciting! I don't start feeding my chicks treats till about 4 weeks but I'm sure it's fine! All chickens go crazy for mealworms! My girls also go crazy for cant elope rinse with cant elope left on it! Some thing chickens CAN NOT EAT: Avocados, apple seeds, potatoes, chocolate and sweets, and things high in sodium! What kind of chicks do you have? Barred Rocks and ??? Your chicks can probably go out at about 6 weeks old!? With the heat lamp, if you see that your chicks are all gathered away from the light then they are to warm, if they are gathered under the light it means they may be a little cold! My chicks at the moment are at 70 degrees and their almost 3 weeks old, they always stay as far away from the light as possible so I figure their pretty warm! Just going you all the advice I've learned in my adventure owning chickens!

 

[chiqita]

If you are giving them anything but starter feed, you need to also offer chick grit or tiny tiny sand/rock stuff. They need grit in their gizzards to digest anything that's not preground. If they are actually outside they will pick it up themselves, but looks like your babies are inside atm. Exposing your chicks to lots of different foods you might use as treats later isn't a bad idea. Ive noticed chicks that get some things like them better later. Dosns't always work, but if you want to feed them certain garden scraps try it early and often.

Just so you know, they will go through a period in their adolescence where they are sure you are going to kill them and freak out any time they see anything tall, including you. They will mostly calm down out of this, don't think you have failed or did something wrong.

Little pieces of straw that seem like worms are popular toys, anything they can pick up and steal from each other. You can use sand, dirt, and or DE (diotamatious earth)(sp) for thier dust bathing. DE is good but MESSSYYY. Anything they can throw around they will like.

Welcome to BYC and the world of chickens!

 

[Clumber]

They are Rhode Island Reds and Barred Rock. We had settled on 4 breeds as what we thought would be best for us, and we were deighted to see a good selection of 2 of those breeds at the auction! We may still get some Speckled Sussex, though. Orps was the other breed.



>What kind of chicks do you have? Barred Rocks and ???

 

[Clumber]

Yes, we have grit for them as well, available in a little can separate from their crumble. We also have that electrolyte stuff (name escapes me) that you add to their water for stressful times, etc. We tend to be the types of people who over-research things long before sticking a toe in the water, as it were. LOL We knew about the DE already b/c we have off and on kept pigeons for our ¹dogs' training. With the pigeons, though, we really just keep them for the dogs. The ² Cotrunix Quail and these chickens are the first time we have had anything to do with birds unrelated to our dogs. LOL All seem happy and healthy and actually our pigeon loft here has doubled with feral ones showing up and wanting to join.... whatever! In fact, they are also laying now and we have some pigeon chicks - which are uglier than sin covered in snot. So even the birds we don't really care that much about are apparently happy and content in their lives. We are going to add a thick layer of sand this weekend to the pigeon's flight pen laced with that PDZ stuff - both things we have learned about here on BYC!

THANK YOU SO MUCH for the warning about the freak out growth period! That is very good to know!




¹ Clumber Spaniels, we show, train, and hunt with them. RARELY we breed, as in we've been in the breed for 20 years now and have produced just 5 litters, and 2 of those litters were singletons. My avatar over <--- there is Ramona.

² The quail we've had for 2 weeks longer now than the chicks, they are also experiments. I have, as an adult, developed an allergy to eggs, which is a BEAR and I don't recommend it. We had heard that people with egg allergies often can tolerate Quail eggs, so when we saw some quail at the auction we went ahead and bought about 15. People think we got them for the dogs too, but no. We hunt grouse locally, and then Chukar and Pheasant in hunt tests or when there are releases. We don't see wild quail very often, so have never hunted them. Our dogs would probably still be fine if they scented them on a hunt. They are giving us 2-3 eggs a day now, and I have had ZERO allergic reaction from eating them. We are also going to try with our chickens, to see if it is possible that I am only allergic to production eggs or maybe the antibiotics or whatever else they are grown using. I am allergic to some antibiotics, so here's hoping!