Green Daily

One of my biggest interests, and one of the biggest topics I bring to the table at GreenDaily is a way to live a more sustainable life through raising your own food free of hormones and chemicals. This includes vegetables and animals, but mainly chickens. This series is an on-going introduction to the wonderful world of raising chickens in a non-rural environment.

Providing nourishment for your new baby chicks is an extremely important protocol to follow. The basics of life apply here, as with any living thing: food and water. But it's not as simple as laying the two down in front of the chickens and wishing them good luck.

Because of the yolk sack they consumed in the egg, day-old baby chicks will not need food for around 2-3 days after hatching. This gives you a tiny window if there are shipping problems, but it's best to have the food ready, nonetheless. Water, on the other hand is vital as soon as possible. You can buy a small waterer with a removable jar from any feed store or most small hardware stores. The Ace Hardware near me sells these waterers, feeders and even chicken feed, but that may not be the case for everyone.

The importance of this jar-waterer is to keep the water clean. You can't simply place a bowl of water in with the chicks because they will contaminate it with food, bedding materials and droppings within minutes. Plus, they will inevitably attempt a bath, which could cause them to die very quickly from the cold.

Once you fill this waterer with fresh clean water, you'll want to add around one tablespoon of molasses per one gallon of water. Sugar also works in this context, but the idea here is to give them a simple, natural form of energy in their water to help them grow and stay active.

As for food, the best bet is to go with store-bought chick starter crumbles. These are specifically made for the small beaks and growing digestive systems of the baby birds. Please note that it is very important to never allow this food to get wet. Keep the feeder and the waterer on opposite sides of the box. If this feed gets wet, it will grow Ergot fungus literally overnight, which will kill the baby chicks upon eating it. This is also why it's so important to change the floor bedding, the water and keep a supply of fresh food several times a day.

After five weeks you can move your chicks to a new type of food, depending on the purpose of your chickens. There is food specifically made for meat birds (also called broilers), which is very high in protein. Then there is food specifically made for egg-layers called Layer Feed. This is supplemented with calcium to help promote egg shell growth. Another great source of calcium for their shells is crushed oyster shells, which you can find in any feed store. If your chickens are free-range, most of the rest of the supplemented feed will not be needed though, because they will get it naturally. You'll soon find that with free-range chickens, you spend almost next-to-nothing on feed in the warmer months.

The most ironic thing is the fact that chickens need so much attention when it comes to what they eat in the first 3 months of their lives, but after that, you'll find that they'll eat anything and everything! They scratch the ground naturally for bugs, weeds and grit (which aids in their digestive process). Often times, you can throw non-meat and non-citrus table scraps to the birds, and they'll go wild for them!

Join me for my next installment of this series, where I'll cover the fun you can have with designing and building a chicken coop.