Looking for homemade chick feed recipe

[chicNlove]

I would rather not use commercial feed, does anyone have a good homemade starter feed recipe they would share?

 

[maxpedley]

To put it simply , boiled egg. It truly is the best feed for chicks. The perfect balance of nutrition and it contains water which means if your chick dosent get the idea if drinking the egg will help it get by. I raise all my chicks on egg and it is far better than any chick feed bought from a feed store.

 

[chicNlove]

Wow thank you, never would have guessed that!

 

[maxpedley]

Just make sure it's not runny though as it is much more hygenic and easy to eat when it is solid . Crumble it into small pieces and there you go. The perfect balance. It's really quite simple if you think about it-Its all the chick gets for the first 3 weeks of its existance. Good luck with your hatching.

 

[Stewarts]

Chickens need more than eggs to have a balanced diet so they don't get too much of one thing and not enough of another. There is absolutely nothing wrong with commercial feed and its a completely balanced diet for them. You can get into trouble if you want to raise them organically because you can't give them any type of grain product, like bread. I give them commercial feed, cracked or rolled corn, rolled barley or oats and they free range in spring through fall. I'm not raising my birds completely organically. Yogurt is an excellent source of the bacteria they need if hatched and hand raised. Hard boiled eggs and a host of different fruits and vegetables can be given. Note that some vegetables are better cooked than raw.

Commercial feed will help them grow up healthy and without the health problems of trying to feed them with homemade products, especially when you aren't sure of what to use in the first place. Do a lot of research before you feed them nothing but eggs and find out, from different sources and sites what the best way to go about doing it is before you commit to it. Then let the rest of us know. Boiled eggs are great for protein but eggs alone and constantly are not the diet to promote health and growth.

By the way, laying hens require crackled or rolled corn and either barley or oats in order to lay eggs, they are 'heat' foods for them in winter {high energy} that help to keep them warm as well. Its absolutely vital that you give them crushed oyster shell as well or the eggs will be so soft shelled that you can easily puncture the virtually non-existent shell.

 

[maxpedley]

Boiled eggs have the exacy perfect balance of nutrients for a growing chick. Boiled egg and water alone will be sufficient for the first 5 to 8 weeks of a chicks life. The egg does not just contain protein but all the neccesary nutrients needed for a healthy growing chick. How else would a chick grow in an egg if it was only high in protein. Remember Stewarts the question is feed for CHICKS not adult laying hens. I agree eggs do have too much protein for a laying hen however for a chick they are the perfect staple feed.

 

[Stewarts]

If you're going for an expensive way to feed chicks for the first few weeks, by all means, use eggs you have to buy from a store. Just remember Maxpedley, that the eggs you purchase in stores are NOT the same Quality as the ones your hens lay. They come from hens that live in a tiny wire cage so they can't even move around and are feed daily a high protein, commercial feed designed to make them lay inferior quality eggs.

Bottom line - chicks need more than just eggs to grow healthy and be able to resist disease. Just because a chick survives and grows in the shell on its egg yolk doesn't mean that should be its only food source once hatched. Common sense here. Do you feed a new born baby the same food that it got from when its was in its mothers womb? Or do you change the type of food once born?

 

[jak2002003]

Boiled eggs have the exacy perfect balance of nutrients for a growing chick. Boiled egg and water alone will be sufficient for the first 5 to 8 weeks of a chicks life. The egg does not just contain protein but all the neccesary nutrients needed for a healthy growing chick. How else would a chick grow in an egg if it was only high in protein. Remember Stewarts the question is feed for CHICKS not adult laying hens. I agree eggs do have too much protein for a laying hen however for a chick they are the perfect staple feed.

Yes, that is what I use. But I add extra stuff to the egg.

Here is my home made chick food recipe:

1. Hard boil several large eggs.
2. Mash them all up (with shells on) until they are in fine pieces.
3. Use some stale wholemeal bread and break it up, then add to the egg mixture.
4. Use you fingers to rub it all together until it gets like breadcrumbs.

The final mixture should be fairy dry and crumbly.

I made a lot up, and freeze it. Then take enough out to last a few days each time. Saves me having to keep boiling up eggs.

As the chicks grow you can add all sorts to the mix...
grated carrot
Finely chopped broccoli
Leafy greens,
and eventually some kitchen scraps.

Once the chicks are feathering out you can put them in a chicken tractor and move it about each day so they get to eat fresh weeds, grass and insects.

 

[Stewarts]

I use a lot of the same ingredients but I put my hard boiled eggs through my processor to make a light crumbly mash. I peel the eggs, dry out the shells and process them separately. I found that putting the eggs with the shell through my processor, the shells are still in too big of pieces and egg shell is sharp and can cause a very serious choking problem in my birds. Its so much easier to process the shells once they've had a day to dry out. Safer too.

Do you feed Scratch or bird seed? The stuff you put out for wild birds in winter? I break up suet, add wild bird seed and use that as a treat. When I had the garden this past summer, they got a lot out of it, lettuce, chard, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, melon; I bought watermelon, cut that in slices and fed that when it was really hot and humid. It helped to keep the birds cool.

 

[maxpedley]

Stewarts- Of course I use only eggs from my own hens. However for the last few years I have not bought any chick feed. I have succesfully raised pheasants, partridge, ducks and chickens on boiled egg alone up to the age they become a grower at which point I put them onto growers pellets. I have not had a single chick die in the first 10 weeks when feeding them boiled egg. This is what I do:

1. Boil eggs for roughly 7 minutes on high heat.
2. Remove shell and egg membrane.
3. Dice the egg with knife and fork into chick crumb sized pieces.
4. Feed to your chicks.