Mary Allen
The perfect food does not exist, because every breeder has an insider tip up his sleeve. However, the type of feed plays a less important role. The composition is much more important.
There are many different types of feed for chicks on the market, and so one encounters many possible solutions in a breeding career. It often takes some time in the first few days for the chicks to learn to eat on their own. Because they obey their inner drive and first peck at all objects. If you feed the chicks crumbs or flour as a basis, rearing feed is a suitable supplement. It is to be understood as a «dessert». An additive that helps the chicks to eat their food with pleasure. The supplementary feed can be made freely available during breeding, molting, and rearing. It can also be enriched with water or sprouted seeds, but in this case, it must be renewed regularly.
Whether crumbs or flour, both have their advantages and disadvantages. When feeding crumbs, the consumption of feed is much less, because the chicks do not have to make a choice with the uniform feed particles. However, the greater consumption of flour is compensated for because the chicks need longer until they have eaten the same amount. The flour is easier for the newly hatched chicks to eat and cheaper to produce as it requires one less production run. And since an animal devours almost two and a half kilograms of food in the first ten weeks of life, the price is also decisive. And soon the chicks are wasteful with the feed and scrape it out of the feeding trough. Studies have shown that feed loss is lower with crumbs. Probably the most important argument in favor of crumbs is also called granules. The granulation must be fine, otherwise, the chicks will not like to eat it. Since it takes one more production step to manufacture, it is more expensive.
Shortly After Hatching, the Chicks are Already Pecking at all Sorts of Things
The disadvantage is that granules can be eaten more quickly, giving the chicks more time to be “bored” – or for nonsense such as pecking each other’s feathers. Another advantage over flour is that chicks get the complete diet and cannot pick individual favorite foods from the flour.
In the book “Life and Behavior of Our Domestic Poultry” Carlheinrich Engelmann writes that the chicks behave no differently than adult chickens. Already in the first hours of life, they peck for the most diverse objects. This also includes the shiny toes of their stablemates or inedible substances such as sand and excrement.
The process of finding food is always the same. First, the target is fixed and then grabbed with the beak. When the chicks have a choice, the urge to eat is always greater than the urge to drink. Studies have shown that 85 percent are more likely to reach for food and only 15 percent for water. Before pecking for food, the feet move. First, both legs are scratched outwards and the floor is exposed. This is how the chicks look for hidden food. If a piece of food is too big, they hit the ground with their beak to reduce it. They also sharpen their beaks on the ground. A chick shakes its head to remove small particles of food from its beak.
In the second to the third week of life, the nutritional status becomes more important. It is part of the natural behavior of chickens to eat feed-in meals. There is a rest break in between. However, the duration varies from chicken to chicken.