Baby chicks questions

**ladytoysdream** · 04-23-2009, 06:23 AM

We now have 12 baby chicks, meat birds, that are about 1 week old. Bought them at the farm store last saturday, a unplanned purchase.
Years ago, we have chickens and other barnyard fowl around so nothing real new to us. I don't remember ever raising babies up though. Hubby gave them a slice of dry bread this morning....and they went nuts over that. Hope a week old is not too young to start them on people food

We do have a bag of regular chick starter feed for them.
We want to put them in a cage on the lawn so they can get some green stuff. How soon would something like lettuce be for them ?

Goal is to get them big enough so the roosters can be for meat, and hopefully a few hens and see if we can get some kind of building made for them. It would be great to have a few eggs every day. We bought a straight run so not sure how many of each we have.

**freebs** · 04-23-2009, 07:50 AM

as long as they can eat it i say feed it to them! we start out early feeding ours like that too. If they were hatched by a hen they would be eating what they could get ahold of!

**Trentt** · 04-23-2009, 09:12 AM

Exactly right. Chicks will eat anything they can pry off the ground, and anything that moves that's not bigger than them.

They need to be kept warm so watch the weather but I think during the daytime it will be fine to put them outdoors and let them forage within the confines of their pen.

I grew up on a chicken farm and the one food that our chickens loved above all (even better than bugs) was POTATO PEELS. They'd compete for them, hoard them, run around with them dangling from their beaks ... and after throwing potato peels to them, the entire flock would be singing to the heavens.

**madhen** · 04-23-2009, 09:24 AM

Mine go crazy for corn and blueberries. I feed fresh food from day one, so as long as it is small enough for them to eat, and not bad for them, they should be okay. If they are out on the lawn, they probably don't need lettuce. If you give them lettuce, I'd stick with the darker greens, not iceburg.

I'll have to try the potato peels. My goats love apple peels.

**ladytoysdream** · 04-24-2009, 02:10 PM

Thanks for the replies

I did a bit of research yesterday and saw that a few items were not a good food choice. Like chocolate and raw potato peels. But I am thinking / assuming, that cooked pototo peels might be okay.

So the chicks are doing well, and only treat so far has been the bread.

I know years ago, when my husband's uncle had his big flock of chickens that I used to save him all kinds of food scraps and the chickens went wild over all of it.

I did pick up a bigger water dish for them. So now they have two

**Trentt** · 04-24-2009, 03:37 PM

I wouldn't give them green potato peels, which are toxic.

We did give ours cooked and raw potato peels (not green) and there were never any problems. As I said, they were crazy for them.