When can the chicks "graduate" from paper towel to the pine shavings??

[Diva]

out of my 25 ordered chicks I also had one that had intestine hanging out but had dried up. I scoped it out with warm water and could tell that more was trying to come out that was definately intestines. It was not faring well and appeared to be in pain so I put her down. I put mine on shaving right away.

Linda

 

[gimme sum eggs]

Diva,

Thanks for giving some input on the intestine issue. I was REALLY dreading having to cull this little guy. We kept dipping his beak in the sugar water and the feed so he had a fighting chance. I called my GF from work at 9:00 last night and she said the poor chick had died. Its sad, but we are still enjoying our other 18 that are doing really well.
First is was "I can't wait till our chicks get here!", and now its "I can't wait till they start laying eggs for us!"

 

[walkswithdog]

There are shavings and shavings. The cheaper uncompressed shavings have tons of tiny bits and dust and particles and those tempt chicks. The cleaned compressed and almost dust free shavings have never caused me a problem.

I put the newly hatched onto a towel over shaving for 24 hours, until I'm sure they're eating and drinking then let em go. Towels wash, they don't get eaten and they're good footing.

Haven't ever had a problem on the good shavings.

 

[gritsar]

My chicks went directly on to large flake shavings. Didn't have a bit of trouble.

 

[TennesseeTruly]

I got my chicks from TSC and they were on large pine shavings there. I thought about using paper towels but I figured they were on pine shavings at TSC, might as well do the same here. They picked a bit at the shavings but not much.