Newbi question

[traew]

I have 6 New Hampshire Reds that are seven weeks old, at what age should I begin to move them away from chick starter feed?

 

[SobbaChickens]

Personal choice, I'm going to move mine to layer feed around 18wks. Right now they are on starter/grower feed and are 3.5ish wks old

Katie

 

[Ridgerunner]

There are lots of different things you could do. The only real rule is don’t give them Layer until they are old enough to lay. The excess calcium in Layer can harm growing chicks.

I don’t know what kinds of feeds are available to you at your feed store. Many of us are limited in that. Other than the Layer, the only really significant difference in any of the other feeds is the percent protein. Some that you might see available:

Starter – 20% to 24% protein
Grower – 16% to 18% protein
Finisher/Developer – 15% protein
Combined Starter/Grower – 20% protein
Flock Raiser – 20% protein

Some of these may be called by some other marketing name and the percent proteins can vary by a percent or two also. That plus not knowing exactly what is available to you makes it a little hard to just say “Do this”. Besides, many people mix and match these in a lot of different ways.

A normal sequence (if you can call anything normal) is to feed them Starter for the first 4 to 8 weeks, then switch to Grower until you switch to Layer. It really doesn’t matter if it is 4 weeks, 8 weeks, or 12 weeks when you switch from Starter to Grower. Just switch whenever that bag runs out.

Some people feed 20% Flock Raiser or the 20% combined Starter/Grower from Day 1 until they switch to Layer. Some people never switch to Layer. Instead, to provide the extra calcium the hens need for the egg shells, they just provide oyster shell on the side. There isn’t just one way to do this. Many different things work.