What age to start BOSS?

[tcstoehr]

Are you all talking about sunflower seeds WITH or WITHOUT the shells?

I toss my chicks a small handful of shelled sunflower seeds every day. They go ape for them.

 

[hugz4all4]

Are you all talking about sunflower seeds WITH or WITHOUT the shells?

I toss my chicks a small handful of shelled sunflower seeds every day. They go ape for them.

With

 

[evemfoster]

Glad to see this thread my 15 babies are 8 weeks old.. I just started giving them meal worms and grass . I was wondering when to start giving them scratch and other things. Do you give the babies house scraps this young.

You didn't have to wait two months to give them worms and grass. Chicks can have that sort of thing right away.

I started my chicks on fermented feed. And started giving the chicks treats right away not much just a couple smaller live mealworms apiece when they were a day old. At 3 days old I gave them a fresh 4" square of grass (turf and all) to help build up the chicks immunity, because i wasn't giving them medicated feed. After that i started giving them a large handful of handpicked grass/weeds to eat each day. The chicks pick at it but they wait for it to wilt first before eating. By the time they were a month old i would take them out to the lawn on hot afternoons and allow them to pick their own grass and bugs. At 5 weeks old half a dozen chicks can wipe out an ant hill in just a few hours. Grass, weeds, seeds, bugs and worms are a chick’s natural food we humans came up with the idea of artificial chicken feed about a hundred years ago. The chickens if they have plenty room to roam and browse do better on the natural diet. Unfortunately few of us have that kind of space to allow them to run.





My chicks didn't get household scraps until i put them out in the coup at about 6 weeks. The compost bin is inside the chicken run. So they can hop up inside the bin and pick out what they want.

The bigger seed in scratch they couldn't or wouldn't eat until they were 8 weeks old. Also scratch is not a very healthy diet and shouldn't be fed exclusively. As someone said earlier, it’s like candy, lots of calories and no nutrition. Makes them fat and fat chickens won't lay eggs until they have lost weight. Personally i believe that over treating chickens is the biggest cause of chickens laying late or not at all. Scratch is good for raising a chickens body temprature in the winter. The whole grains taking longer to to digest warms the bird up. But i have been advised to still keep the scratch to only 10% of the total feed.

 

[chickenmadness7]

evemfoster,
Thank you for that most informative post. I'm a new chicken mom and appreciate it so much. I'm intrigued by your compost being kept in your chicken run. Is it in a bin? I have a compost bin and had never thought of moving it to the run.

 

[chickenmadness7]

My biggest concern with moving my compost bin to the chicken run is that in past years, it's attracted a plethera of black bears. So I may just leave it where it is. LOL

 

[evemfoster]

My biggest concern with moving my compost bin to the chicken run is that in past years, it's attracted a plethera of black bears. So I may just leave it where it is. LOL

I dont add anything to my compost a bear would want. While there is a food scraps i make a point of not adding meat scraps. Its mostly shreaded paper, weeds, veggie trimmings and coffee grounds. My compost bin is made out of cheep plastic fencing i bought to make potato towers with. I keep one side turned down a little to allow the chickens to get in and out.

And live up in the mountains miles from the nearest town. I have had ocasional trouble with black bears and the feds released grislys and gray wolves not 5 miles away a couple years back. Not to mention the long list of other meat eaters here abouts. So i have a good strong electric fence around the outer yard mainly to keep them out of my garden and off my porch and another one around the outside of the chicken run. Hoping that will keep the chickens alive.

 

[K9Dave]

evemfoster,
Thank you for that most informative post.  I'm a new chicken mom and appreciate it so much.  I'm intrigued by your compost being kept in your chicken run.  Is it in a bin?  I have a compost bin and had never thought of moving it to the run. 

heres my little compost bin and as if yesterday it's inside their run. To keep other animals out of it, I let them do their thing to what food is there and then turn it so that it's under old compost and the animals don't smell it. I get the clippings and decoration from grocery stores produce section. They cut the watermelons and such fancy for deco. They use it for a few days and then I freeze it for these hot Phoenix summer days. They hollow it out quick. They love their cabbage and whatever else I can hang for them too.

 

[chickenmadness7]

What an awesome idea for a compost! Plus, it doubles as a perch area. Bet my guineas would love it! Thank you so much. BTW, we live in the mountains also I've also never composted meat or eggs. ...just veggies, fruit, leaves, and paper. It seems the bears come whenever I added fruit so maybe this year I'll leave that out. Thank you! I have a plastic compost bin. I could probably use it in my chicken run but yours is way cuter!

 

[Tomtommom]

Everyone loves a compost perch!

 

[FaerieChicken]

I give to my girls and boys all the time. I can always tell when the wild birds eat them because they leave the shells behind. I have a couple of 8 week old chick that are now eating with the hens and roos, so they now have access to them as I include it in the mix of their food. They are all free range, I pull weeds and toss them to the chickens because area they free range they have demolished all the greens if there were ever any. I want to plant some thing hardy that will cover the dirt quickly but that will also handle the scratching of chickens and be beneficial for them too if they were to eat it. I tried fodder over the winter a few times and it worked out nicely, but I just don't have trays to anymore. I had bout a seed starting kit, the kind that comes with the jiffy pellets, and poked holes in the bottom of the trays, but the trays didn't hold up very long and figured it would be too expensive having to by the trays all the time. If I could find something sturdier, then I would do it again, but I don't want them too big either. Any ideas?