What Vegetables Do You Feed to Baby Chickens?

There are many reasons why people choose to raise chickens. The chicks are cute and make wonderful pets, and having your own chickens means a constant supply of free range eggs. It may seem hard to believe, but chickens can easily be tamed when you raise them from a young age. In terms of feeding them, they eat a mixture of grains, vegetables, fruit and meat, but not all vegetables are suitable for them.

Once the baby chickens are at least a week old, they can be fed a mixture of cracked corn, wheat, oatmeal and fat-free meat. Make sure the corn is broken down into small pieces; place in a food processor if necessary. Greens are not recommended until the chicks are older as they can cause diarrhea.

You can feed your baby chickens the scraps of vegetables, such carrot peelings, but these should be a treat rather than the norm. Also ensure that any vegetables you feed them are soft; don’t give them a whole carrot, for instance, as it will be difficult for them to break it into smaller pieces when they’re young.

Chickens like pecking at things and foraging generally. If you have a lawn and they are allowed to roam free, they will likely nibble blades of grass throughout the day. Once they are a bit older, if they are being kept in a coop, provide them with greens such as lettuce, cabbage and spinach so that they can peck at their will.

Baby chickens find avocado toxic, therefore under no circumstances should you feed them this. Other things to avoid are cucumber and zucchini, as it gives them diarrhea; they can’t digest pumpkin seeds, potato or rhubarb leaves either. Always feed them fresh vegetables as stale ones can play havoc with their digestive system.