Question about Chick Grit

[Mr chicken dude]

So my question is do baby chicks NEED grit or can they do without until they're old enough to eat normal sized grit???And at what age can they eat normal sized grit???

Thanks,Collin

 

[teach1rusl]

Chicks are fine without grit as long as the only thing they have access to is their chick starter feed. If you are giving them treats or letting them "play" outside, then you really should use provide grit for them. When mine were tiny, I just bought a box of parakeet grit from a pet shop and would sprinkle a little on their feed (like salting your food). I'm not sure how large the chunks are in "real" grit, so I don't know the answer to your second question... By eight weeks my chicks were decent sized...large enough that I would have felt comfortable feeding them grit as large as the oyster shell pieces I give them now.

 

[TurkeyMountainChickens]

You can buy grit made especially for chicks, too. I bought some at TSC. It's MUCH finer grain than the stuff meant for adults. Sometimes the parakeet grit has too much calcium in it, although you can find it plain, too.

I also sprinkle it over their food, like salt. Of course, when they do go out to play, they eat a lot of dirt, too!

 

[BellaLulaFarm]

No one around here carries grit, so others on the forum told me to give them a pan of sandy dirt, which the chicks LOVE. It sounds like a bunch of woodpeckers have hit the room after I bring in a fresh pan--tappity tap tap tap! I'm getting the dirt from different parts of the yard to try to expose them early to cocci.

 

[felidaet]

One of our local feed stores told me last year that LF breeds could switch from chick grit to regular grit at about 12 weeks. I happened to run out of chick grit at about that time and so I switched them at 12 weeks.

 

[Chieftain]

Since my covered run has a sand floor, I sifted about 2 quarts of it into a cardboard can box, and put it in the pen with my 2 week old BJG chicks. I sprinkle a little scratch in the box every day and they love to scratch around pecking for it. The older girls that live out there eat exclusively in the sandy run so I don't have to worry about providing supplemental grit.

That gives all of them a constant source of grit, and that means I can offer them a variety of tasty treats.

I started all of them off in the brooder with about 1/2 teaspoon of coarse corn grits (polenta) mixed with a little sand. Even at just a couple of days old, they were happy to scratch and peck at the mix and they had no problems at all eating it. And because they had grit in their little gizzards, I was able to start feeding them little mealworms at 2 weeks. Now at 4 weeks, they come right to me when I walk up to the pen, and are beginning to get used to being handled because I make them take mealworms out of my hand.

Plain old builder's sand, the kind you buy in a tube at Home Depot is perfect. The pieces of grit vary in size so the little chicks can find pieces that work for them, while the older birds find the bigger chunks and gobble them.