paper eating chicks ;}

[Fresh Eggs]

Hi,


I have 22 12 day old pullets that are eating pieces of paper towel and/ or cardboard! What should I do??

Danke,


Fresh Eggs

 

[Chickenaddict]

Take it away and keep them on pine shavings, it shouldn't hurt them if it was only a bit but i wouldn't let them make a habit of it

They may eat a few pine shavings too but i dont think you can get around that. They eat just about anything at that age

 

[CBee]

Oh gosh, sounds just like mine when they were little. They had a hay day with paper towels. Being as ignorant as I was, I let it continue until they moved out of the brooder.

It won't hurt them any, but, like Chickenaddict said, just don't let them make a habit out of it.

 

[gritsar]

They're plenty old enough to be on shavings. Toss the paper towels.

 

[RendonRoo]

so how long should you leave the paper towels in?

 

[Fresh Eggs]

Well.... thats the prob! I would LOVE to put them on the shavings, but I need a new box to do that, because It has been covered in poop, and it is getting alittle tight.



Thanks,

Fresh Eggs



P.S. How do I post pics of my girlies?

 

[CBee]

The way I post pics is I just upload them from my digital camera to the computer, and fix the lighting a little (which, of course, you don't need to do), save them to the computer (in .JPG, you might need to resize them too), and then log onto a free image uploader site like photobucket.com. After that, get the image URL that Photobucket gives you, click 'Img' when you are writing a comment on BYC, and then just paste the URL into the middle of the code BYC gives you.

I hope that made a little sense.

 

[gritsar]

[email protected] :

so how long should you leave the paper towels in?

Three or four days, until you're sure that they know what's their feed and what's not.
I will tell a guilty little secret here. Before my chicks arrived I had everything all set up in their brooder, except I had forgotten to put down the paper towels. I realized it as we were moving them from the shipping box to the brooder and left my SO to watch the chicks while I ran to the house for the paper towels.
My SO wanted to know what I was doing, so I explained. He just shook his head and asked me if I thought they put paper towels down in the commercial houses when they recieved shipments of 10,000 chicks per house. Of course they don't.
So I didn't put paper towels down. I used large flake pine shavings and never had a problem with them eating the bedding.
They knew where their food was.​

 

[RendonRoo]

thanks for the reply

 

[cmom]

My brooder is wire. I have a tray that I put pine shavings in that they like to lay in. Originally I put some paper towells in but they pooped all over the towling and was picking at it too so I took it out. My brooder stayed much cleaner. There is a picture on my BYC Page.