New Chicks in Brooder Tomorrow

[LizD360]

Our new babies are 4 weeks old this week. I forgot how much they poop when they're this small.

Whatever you choose to use - it will get messy and need to be changed a lot the first couple of weeks. If you use shavings I would only use enough to cover the bottom of the brooder with newspaper underneath them. Our girls love my daughters old soccer sock (stuffed with the other sock inside it) to snuggle up on and the cardboard box to hide in and climb on. We also gave them a cardboard tube to climb on.

 

[Wheeler Farms Chickens]

Quote:
Thank you for pointing that out. I have truly enjoyed this forum. I think I am just nerved up and dont want to screw up. Live and learn I guess. I have decided to use an old flannel sheet over the litter for the first day or two.

 

[Yonaton]

I've always used straw or hay for the past 20 years for my chicks and chickens. I've never used paper towels for anything but in my kitchen under my sandwiches.

I prefer the hay as it's better to spread over the yard/land than straw (hay has a nutritive value whether being eaten or spread on dirt), plus it always has something in it that the chicks can find to nibble on, whereas straw has nothing nutritive at all about it.

The only reason I use straw sometimes is that the square bales of hay can get hard to find as the competition to buy it up is pretty fierce around here with the horse owners.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You will get conflicting advice, partly because so many different things work. The other thing is that the things you are warned against do not always cause problems.

Many people raise chicks on wood shavings and never have a problem. The chicks do eat some of the wood shavings, don't have grit, yet they do fine. But on the rare occasion, a chick gets in trouble or dies from eating wood shavings, especially before they learn to eat their real food. So we advise people to put paper towels down for the first two or three days, until they learn what to eat.

Newspaper is slick. Occasionally a chick will slip and become straddle legged. It does not happen to all chicks raised on newspaper, but it does happen, so there are warnings against newspaper.

Baby chicks that eat Layer feed with the higher calcium do not always develop bone deformatiomns or have kidney problems, but some do. With the kidney problems, you often don't even know they have a problem, even when they die a year later when those damaged kidneys finally fail. You think that chickens sometimes just die for no apparent reason.

Look at most of the advice given on this forum as guidelines, not absolute laws of nature. Following the guidelines does not guarantee success. Failing to follow the guidelines does not guarantee failure. The guidelines are there to increase your odds of success, not guarantee anything. Some of the conflict comes from people that get away with not following the guidelines so they think the guidelines are rubbish. Just because you raised a batch if chicks on newspapaer and none became straddle legged does not mean that it never happens. It just did not happen this time.