What kinds of fruits, nuts, and vegetables can you feed chicks?

[lillypurrs23]

This is our first time raising chicks (we just got 4 yesterday) and I was wondering what kinds of fruits, nuts, vegetables do they like? Do they like pears, and are they okay for them?

 

[CorporateGranola]

How old are your chicks? If they are newly hatched, I would keep them on crumbles for the first week or two before introducing them to snacks. Also, you might want to have some baby chick grit available (without calcium!) for them to help digest the soft foods.

 

[Judy]

The important thing is to limit the treats so they get plenty of nutrition from the feed.

There is a chicken treat chart on BYC, somewhere. They will eat most things.

 

[Broodica]

We have 4 nine day olds. I have been offering them little bits of carrot tops and dandy lion greens...BLECH. They are not interested. They LOVE little crickets tho! Those are a rare special treat.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=2593-Treats_Chart

That is the treat chart, but it looks like it's geared more for adults?

 

[CorporateGranola]

My girls also LOVED to chase the injured palmetto bugs (they are a *plague* in south GA) around the brooder. I might have intentionally injured a few of them myself just to watch them play with their food. Tons of fun watching them!

 

[AKsmama]

I think the treat chart is geared more for the older chickens, just because it is easy to go overboard with treats for chicks. They are so darn cute, with their food running and cheeping

You can give plain unflavored yogurt and well-chopped boiled egg without using grit, but anything else they'll need grit (without calcium, as previously stated) to help break it up. Mine just stared at yogurt (and then walked through it, yuk) the first few times I offered it, but they went for the boiled egg right away. Now they love yogurt and sling it everywhere as they eat it like ravenous little dinosaurs. Just make sure that their main source of nutrition is their chick starter.

 

[lillypurrs23]

I just want to know for when they're old enough.

 

[CorporateGranola]

You can start giving them treats at around 2 weeks, but be careful and don't "over do" it. They need the nutrition from their normal food, and if they are full on treats, they won't be eating enough of their normal diet.

 

[Judy]

This has been discussed here before, especially in relation to the treat chart. I think the reason you don't see age come into the chart is there is a lot of disagreement over how old they need to be for treats, and nothing scientific on which to draw a real conclusion, at least not that I've ever seen.

I imagine there are threads on here that go 4 pages or more discussing the relative merits of different treats, who gave what, etc. I've seen flat-out assertions, for example, of no treats before 8 or 10 weeks, then someone saying, I gave treats at 3 days and they are grown, happy and healthy.

So, if they grow up healthy, then you made the right choice. In nature, they eat what mama eats, and they find their own.