General "chick feeding question" for folks out there.
I get my feed from a local organic feed "co-op" operation and had a batch of starter with whole grains. After raising 25 broiler chicks for a week on crumbles, I switched to feed that I'd been sold as 23% starter for chicks.
The chicks were eating it voraciously, however there are a lot of whole grains too big for the small chicks to eat, which after awhile become the only grains accessible to them and prevented the chicks from being able to eat the smaller grains because the large grains were on the top of the feeder and covered up the smaller grains. These larger grains are about the size of a half of a dried black bean (they are a white bean). I had to clean out the feeder periodically so they can get to the smaller grains, after which they mob the feeder, indicating to me they are not able to get enough feed when the larger grains are blocking them from the finer grains.
The feed supplier says she's raised 900 chicks starting them off with the whole grain feed and that if I'd started them off with the whole grain feed instead of crumbles, they would have learned to eat the largeer grains. Those grains seem to me like they would be huge to a chick less than a week old.
I was able to swap out my stock of the "starter" for the 20% grower she sells which appears to be a smaller overall grain size with the largest being lentils and should be OK for the FR chicks according to the hatchery, however,
A) Has anyone ever seen new newly hatched chicks eating whole grain feed with large grains in it?
B) Am I getting snowed by this feed vendor?
Thanks,
-DB
I get my feed from a local organic feed "co-op" operation and had a batch of starter with whole grains. After raising 25 broiler chicks for a week on crumbles, I switched to feed that I'd been sold as 23% starter for chicks.
The chicks were eating it voraciously, however there are a lot of whole grains too big for the small chicks to eat, which after awhile become the only grains accessible to them and prevented the chicks from being able to eat the smaller grains because the large grains were on the top of the feeder and covered up the smaller grains. These larger grains are about the size of a half of a dried black bean (they are a white bean). I had to clean out the feeder periodically so they can get to the smaller grains, after which they mob the feeder, indicating to me they are not able to get enough feed when the larger grains are blocking them from the finer grains.
The feed supplier says she's raised 900 chicks starting them off with the whole grain feed and that if I'd started them off with the whole grain feed instead of crumbles, they would have learned to eat the largeer grains. Those grains seem to me like they would be huge to a chick less than a week old.
I was able to swap out my stock of the "starter" for the 20% grower she sells which appears to be a smaller overall grain size with the largest being lentils and should be OK for the FR chicks according to the hatchery, however,
A) Has anyone ever seen new newly hatched chicks eating whole grain feed with large grains in it?
B) Am I getting snowed by this feed vendor?
Thanks,
-DB
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