Chickens

Chicken feed, dirt and water.

A few years ago my son gave me 13 day old chicks, in the middle of winter!

His neighbor’s chickens loved their new chicken house so much they hid some eggs and a hen set the eggs. There was three foot of snow outside!

I brought a 4’ x 3, 14” high wire rabbit cage into my living room and devised a clean out tray, to clean the cage without disturbing the chicks.

Note: Because carpeting is filthy, even when it looks clean and gassing off toxins constantly, I do not allow carpeting in my home. So a broom and a mop took care of any spills.

I used a large tin pie plate, with an adobe fired brick placed in it to stop it from tipping over, for water. I used a second tin pie plate with a brick to hold the scratch feed.

I do not feed chick starter or laying mash to my chickens. All of those contain needless chemicals and dangerous ‘medications’. My chickens live and produce, unless a critter gets them, 12 to 16 years, on free range, scratch and whole sun flower seeds.

This is the first batch of chicks I had ever had to raise in the house. I watched them eating and drinking.

“Poor little chubbers, don’t even have any dirt to scratch in.”

So I went outside and used a pickax to get some dirt. I set it by the heater to thaw out.

I used a third large pie plate, with a brick for the dirt and placed it in the rabbit cage, with the chicks.

That night I checked them. The water and scratch pans were still 1/3 full but the dirt pan was empty.

I figured the chicks had happily scratched the dirt out onto the cage floor. But it was late so I decided to wait until morning to clean the cage floor.

I believe in free feeding my animals. There is seldom any waste and my animals never suffer from obesity or want. I refilled the pans and went to bed.

Note:
The pans held 2 cups by volume each of water, scratch and dirt.

In the morning the water and scratch pans were about 1/3 full, the dirt pan was virtually empty, maybe 1 tablespoon of dirt left in the pan.

The wire rabbit cage was sitting directly on the clean out tray. All I had to do was lift the cage off the tray and dump the tray.

Anyone who has raised chicks is familiar with their fantastic growth rate. But these little chubbers had drank, eaten and scratched roughly 11 cups of water, scratch and dirt.

I expected at least 4 full cups of dirt and some scratch in the tray.

There was less than 1 ½ cups after dumping the tray AND sweeping the floor.

The chicks were eating the dirt! And most of their poop.