Newly hatched chicks: what to do
Taking care of the chicks is a rewarding activity as well as crucial for ensuring the success of the chicken coop.
The chicks are very delicate creatures, which unfortunately do not always have the means to survive, including the right nutrition capable of growing them healthy and robust.
The newly hatched chicks need to receive the heat to survive and the right nourishment to grow vigorously.
After birth, they must be placed in incubator for 36/48 hours to give them the warmth they need to survive. In fact, baby poultry learn to manage their body temperature 4 to 5 days after hatching, so the first few days of life are crucial for their survival.
How to warm new-born chicks
After the eggs hatch, to take care of the newly hatched chicks, one uses a artificial snail (thermal snail), a heating plate that is used to warm the chicks instead of a real hen. In this way the chicks can receive the warmth and support they could receive under a real hen. The heating plate does not produce its own light, unlike the infrared lamp, and the chick grows more adequately, following the normal rhythms of daylight and night.
Chicks are usually capable of eating on their own but it may be necessary to wet their beaks and bring them closer to the feeder for them to drink.
Do newly hatched chicks eat alone?
Chicks are usually capable of eating on their own but it may be necessary to wet their beaks and bring them closer to the feeder for them to drink.
How long can new-born chicks go without eating?
Don't be alarmed if you don't see the chicks eating once they come out of their shells: inside the egg were well nourished, so they can survive even without feeding immediately: for the first 48 hours the young will continue to benefit from nourishment from the yolk of the egg.
Chicks are considered infants as long as they need to receive the emanations of the infrared lamp: at which point nourishment must be continued until they reach sexual development, around 5 months of age. By the fourth month of life, the required protein reaches 20% of the total nutritional requirements. Once they are old enough, they can venture outdoors and try their hand at spontaneously searching for food such as worms, insects and grass. From the fifth month they can supplement their diet with small amounts of bread, cheese, vegetables, fruit, taking care to avoid giving them less digestible foods such as citrus fruits, potato peelings, dried beans, rhubarb leaves, onions.
What do newly hatched chicks eat?
Nutrition of small poultry must include balanced quantities of minerals, vitamins, proteins and carbohydrates. Therefore, the Brady diet they resort to does not always prove adequate to sustain them from a proper nourishment point of view.
For this purpose, we can either use the information on the packaging or consult an expert to fine-tune the right composition. In fact, there are many types of feed for breeds of hens which take into account the specifics of each category of hens they are aimed at (e.g. ornamental, laying hens...) in order to meet the type of development indicated.
The importance of a nutritious diet
A very nutritious chick feed can consist of a mixture of fine grains and flours based on: soybean extract meal, roasted whole-grain soya, maize germ, wheat bran, vitamins of whole-grain salts, dicalcium phosphate, millet and legume flours, maize germ cake.
Water and food, however, must never be missing from the feeders (twice as much liquid is consumed as feed).
Newly hatched chicks feed on grains, meal and feed, mixed in the appropriate proportions, to get the nourishment they need. The feed must always be dry: if it gets wet, e.g. from rain, it must be disposed of, because providing it to the chicks in that condition means exposing them to the risk of disease.
For this reason, feeding in the wild may be inappropriate to provide them with the right nutrition. It is more advantageous to use industrial feeds enriched with vitamins, minerals and supplements to make them more nutritious, without exaggerating the proportions.
The downside of this is that sometimes the industrial products tend to incentivise too la growth of chickens, so you can choose to mix them with flour, wheat, pulses, maize. To avoid making mistakes, it is best to follow the manufacturers' instructions on product storage.
What feed for newly hatched chicks?
One idea is to provide chicks with the feed normally served to adults together with fragmented grains (millet, maize, wheat, etc.). A highly nutritious diet could include a common feed base supplemented with additional food (approximately 10% of the total) based on fish, bread, fruit, tomatoes, vegetables, meat. Meat products should be cooked to avoid the risk of infection.
It is also best to ensure that you provide enough daily fresh water to our little feathered friends.
There are feeds containing coccidiostat which help to counteract the onset of coccidia-related diseases in the gut. Indeed, chicks at this stage of their life are not yet able to defend themselves effectively against infections (as coccidia can be ingested when young poultry move from the nest to the ground). Feed with coccidiostat unfortunately does not provide absolute defence against these parasites: alternatively, it is possible to vaccinate the chicks and provide them with ordinary feed.
You must also have a feeder big enough to accommodate the entire mash by keeping it within reach of the chicks, with a base such that the chicks can reach it. The drinking drinker must also clearly not be so large that they risk drowning while drinking.
Feeding of grown chicks
When the chicks pass the first month of age and enter the third month of life are large enough to be defined chickens and pullets, and can be fed with feed containing 19% protein, i.e. less than the first period variety and more than the adult chicken variety.
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