What Do You Feed Chicks?

Up to Six Weeks

From day one through six weeks of age, your chicks should be fed commercial chick starter feed. Available at your local feed store, chick starter feed comes in 25 or 50 pound bags and will supply all the nutrition your chicks need to thrive in the first weeks of life. Having a steady supply of feed and water is the most important factor in chicks surviving those early days of life.

At six weeks old, chicks should be switched to pullet grower feed. Smaller breeds should continue to be fed pullet grower feed for the next 20 weeks. Larger breeds such as Brahmas or Cochins should be fed the same feed for 25 weeks.

After 20 or 25 weeks, your chicks are old enough to be switched to laying feed, also known as "hen lay." Hen lay contains extra calcium and about 16 percent protein to ensure the hens produce strong-shelled eggs.

Chicken feed comes in three different forms: pellets, crumbles and mash. Mash is a powder and easily wasted by the feeding chickens. Compressed mash is used to make pellets, and crumbles are crushed pellets.
Many who raise chickens prefer to feed crumbles to the younger chicks and pellets to the older chickens. However, in the event the chickens are all housed in one poultry yard, pellets are less wasteful because when they are spilled out of the feeders, the birds can still eat them off the ground.
Each type of feed is formulated to provide the nutritional needs of chicks in each stage of development. Most starter feeds are also medicated to prevent those serious disease common in chicken flocks. Pullet and laying feeds are less likely to be medicated and will be labeled as such. Very seldom do you need to feed your chick any supplemental feed.

One thing your chickens will enjoy is "scratch," a mixture of seeds and grains you scatter in the yard to encourage them to scratch. Scratching provides exercise and also supplies them with grit for proper digestion.
The only caution with feeding scratch is that it dilutes the nutrient levels of the grower feed or hen lay. Scratch should only make up 10 to 15 percent of your chickens' daily food needs. The easiest way to regulate that is to only feed the chicks the amount of scratch that can be eaten in 20 minutes.