When can I start feeding treats?

chickens are lactose intolerant.

Would you feed a lactose intolerant kid some cheese? No the mom would give you the biggest slap the next day!

Would you feed a dog chocolate? No the owner will slap you with the vet bill the next day.

So never feed chickens cheese.

My chickens love grit. I can't seem to keep up topping up the grit. Treats are only to distract them when I go see on them.

At the moment I am in the process of training 7 cockerels not to annoy the neighbours. Yesterday did not go well unfortunately - my dog climbed on my fox proof run... It was fox proof but it was not designed to hold a dog nearly as heavy as me so he went crashing in and made a right racket at 5 in the morning.

The ironic thing is I had just bought some dog proof fencing but hadn't put it up yet. He had one of them in his mouth but couldn't see any blood.

Anyway I am rambling, yes treats to distract them, to cheer them up when they have been scared half to death or when it is particularly cold.

Treats are generally fattening and we generally like to check on our birds a lot so it is easy to overfeed treats which won't benefit them, they will just develop a liver disease and die earlier.
 
Do they still need grit if there are outside pecking and foraging in dirt? Just don't want to cause issues by giving them too much. I was planning on offering when they were laying for the calcium though

No, they don't, although some people choose to offer grit when they're little anyway. Grit is totally different from calcium supplements or oyster shell. Grit is just tiny rocks. :)
 
Do they still need grit if there are outside pecking and foraging in dirt? Just don't want to cause issues by giving them too much. I was planning on offering when they were laying for the calcium though

Depends on your "dirt" - if you have rocky soil or some gravel in areas they can access, then you don't need to specifically add grit.

You are confusing soluble grit (oyster shell, calcium) with insoluble grit (usually granite) though - all chickens need insoluble grit at all ages, but only active layers need calcium/soluble.
 

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